


Tooth And Claw

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Primeval
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Team Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-23
Updated: 2015-01-23
Packaged: 2018-03-08 19:26:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 38,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3220667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The team hunt a killer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Teamfic originally written (over several months, with a great deal of whining about the plot) in 2011. Ian Mackie belongs to fififolle, and vague references to Special Forces OCs pertain to Fred's OCs.

            A blur of tawny fur crashed into the roe deer’s body, ripping and tearing at its back until it could crush the animal to the ground and crouch over it, mouth wrapped around the animal’s neck, long, curved teeth cutting off air and blood. The deer kicked and gasped, hooves twitching uselessly, as the rest of the herd fled away into the grey light of false dawn.

 

            The deer was dead, and the big cat relaxed its grip, dragging the kill into the shadows of the bushes and sitting on its haunches, tensed, as it began to eat, tearing indiscriminately at the flesh. If it was too slow, _they_ would come, and it was hungry; it had been days since it had managed a kill larger than a rabbit, only a mouthful even for this thin, malnourished shadow of a creature.

 

            It knew why that was. The burn in its shoulder was a constant reminder.

 

            It had come upon a party of _them_ , holding strange, long sticks that made loud noises, noises that sounded like no animal’s call it had ever heard, not in this strange, damp place or in the lands it remembered from long ago. The long sticks had been making noises and birds had fallen dead from the sky, and it had slid through the shadows, nipping in to catch the kills. And then in among the loud noises there had been a sudden, sharp burning agony in its shoulder and it had roared, as it had not done for a long time, and fled, dropping the last kill, running silently from the loud _them_ that crashed and yelled. It had licked the slowly-oozing blood from its shoulder, trying to heal the wound, but it had not. The flesh had closed over it, but the burn did not stop. Did not stop. Never stopped. Made it weak. Made it vulnerable.

 

            The big cat ripped into the flesh with increased savagery, and all the while, its muzzle painted with blood, it watched and listened for _them_.

 

***

 

            The abrupt sound of heels clicking alerted Sir James Lester to the approach of Christine Johnson and her dangerously lacquered hair, and he turned, an expertly social smile painting itself onto his face. “Christine. How delightful to see you.”

 

            “James! A pleasure as always.” Christine’s smile was alarming, but no more so than usual. “I hear you have a new pet project.”

 

            “I wouldn’t go so far as to call it _pet_ ,” he drawled, in long-suffering tones.

 

            “After what it’s done to your marriage? I should think not,” Christine smiled, falling into step beside him.

 

            Sir James controlled himself with some difficulty. “Your information is beautifully spiteful and slightly inaccurate, as usual. Kathy and I are not separating because of this job.”

 

            “You can’t tell me it wasn’t the last straw,” Christine objected, and a suitably sympathetic, sad expression appeared on her face. “I should have thought the Minister would be more accommodating. I’m so sorry, James.”

 

            Sir James moved his head slightly. “Your sympathy is... appreciated.”

 

            “It’s entirely sincere, James,” Christine assured him, halting before the lift, and flashed him a smile he’d last seen on a gory documentary about Great White Sharks which his daughter and youngest son had been watching with unbecoming enthusiasm. It had belonged to a shark examining a diver in a cage, and the word that had sprung to Lester’s mind had been _dinner_.

 

            He raised an eyebrow at her. “For once.”

 

            “For once,” Christine agreed, pressing a button, and then added: “You know, James, if you ever need staff to organise this unfortunately messy mission the Minister has dumped in your lap, I can recommend someone - one Oliver Leek. A bit sycophantic, but useful, and I’m sure he could manage Professor Cutter, or at least run interference. The talented Miss Brown may well become overwhelmed shortly if your operation is destined to become as large as I think it is.”

 

            Lester raised the other eyebrow as well, for effect. “And therefore a feather in someone else’s cap to be transferred to yours...?”

 

            Christine smiled. She probably meant it to be mild. It wasn’t. “I wouldn’t do that to you, James; you’re too useful an ally.”

 

            “So glad to hear it,” Lester murmured. “Now if you’ll excuse me...” He made his way sedately away from the lift pretending he couldn’t feel Christine Johnson’s ice eyes on him, burning between his shoulder blades. That was a distressing woman if ever he’d met one – Kathy was just as frightening and ruthless, but she rarely, if ever, hid her agenda.  Christine Johnson, on the other hand... She was clearly taking an interest in the project, and it would be useless to wonder why. He would find out - and probably sooner than he wanted to.

 

            He checked his watch. If he hurried, he could get the papers he needed for the weekend from his office and be fifteen minutes early to pick up his daughter from judo - easily enough time to stop and buy a couple of ice-creams on the way.

 

***

 

            The pain was too much. The prey were too scarce – too difficult to find – too fast for the cat, in its weakened state. It snarled and flinched at every shadow, fearing _them_ and their loud noises, and their long sticks. Dimly it remembered creatures like _them_ , but different, smaller, quieter: prey- _them_ , living in the different place, the place where it had come from.

 

            The big cat crept slowly down through the damp, green country, twitching away from _them_ , who seemed everywhere, inescapable, like the burn in its shoulder, eating at its flesh, slowing it, and it was no easier to catch prey now than it had been in its former hunting grounds. And it was _hungry_.

 

            The sun rose high, beating down on the cat. Weak, it slunk into the shadow of the bushes, hiding from the heat of the day. The sun hurt its eyes, and its chest heaved fitfully and then it... saw. A _them_ , and it stiffened in fear, but a cub- _them_ , a little thing and yet without its mother. Playful, fearless, it ran within reach of the cat.  

 

            The big cat tensed, its claws digging silently into the ground and its mouth half–opened, its nostrils flaring, tasting the air. Light shone on the yellowed ivory of its canines, and its brain, frenzied with hunger and pain, recognised the smell under the layers of different that _them_ had, that made them strange from prey- _them_.

 

            Prey.

 

            And it was desperate. It was starving to death. And here was prey, prey, and its shoulder ached and burned and-

 

            It pounced and caught and the cub- _them_ did not even have time to howl for its mother.

 

***

 

            “I would,” Claudia Brown said thoughtfully, sinking an espresso in one reckless gulp, “call them mad. Except they aren’t; not even Connor Temple. They’re just very clever.”

 

            “Oh dear,” Lorraine Wickes said, calling for the bill. “You must feel so out of place.”

 

            Claudia pulled a face at her, but Lorraine just smiled slightly. “No, seriously, Lorraine. I’m fairly sure that Connor Temple is a genius. A socially maladjusted genius who probably doesn’t wash his socks more than once a week and is either spectacularly wrong or horribly right, sometimes at the same time, but a genius nonetheless. Professor Cutter is even worse: he has some common sense, it’s just that I’ve never really _seen_ it. He’s unbelievably pigheaded and he lives in his own little world.”

 

            Lorraine raised her eyebrows.

 

            “Nobody is allowed to call anything with three-inch talons _beautiful_.”

 

            Lorraine looked down at her coffee, and sipped it. “Fair enough...”

 

            Taking this as permission to continue, Claudia persisted. “That said, he’s extremely clever and very well-known in his field. Heaven knows what he’s doing at _Central Metropolitan_ ; he looks and acts like he ought to be knocking around the back corridors of Oxford, covered in dust and academic glory. He’s probably just annoyed someone too many times. And there’s his assistant, Stephen Hart, who is possibly the sexiest man I’ve ever seen outside a photoshoot-”

 

            “You said that about Lieutenant Becker,” Lorraine observed to her cappuccino.

 

            Claudia developed an expression that would have been a scowl on anyone less obviously designed to be inoffensive, and didn’t take the bait. “-But, _unlike_ Lieutenant Becker, he can’t hold a conversation on anything apart from his subject and environmentalism, and I fell asleep during that particular lecture. He doesn’t look like he has two brain cells to rub together. Abigail Maitland – Abby – is the only one with anything resembling sense at all. She was studying zoology, but dropped out to be a zookeeper. I’m fairly sure saints would have collapsed under the weight of Connor’s crush, but not her. She can also give a coherent report of an incident without reeling off into a tangent about quantum physics or the finer points of the evolution of... of... ferns! Or something! I don’t know, they’re _maddening_.”

 

            “Do you think she can write it down without me needing a guide to hieroglyphs just to read it?” Lorraine wondered aloud, glancing around the restaurant, which was reasonably empty. If the staff had wondered about a reservation being made for two-thirty p.m., outside of the usual rush, they’d said nothing, and the crowd of busy professionals and lunching ladies were mostly gone.

 

            “It’s possible,” Claudia conceded, running frustrated hands through her hair. “Don’t- I mean,” she added, raising one hand in warning, “they’re mad, but you _will_ like them, and it’s certainly an improvement on your current job. The... aspects... you described to me.”

 

            “Slightly better pay,” Lorraine agreed, dodging the question of the ‘aspects’, “Sir James would need to put real effort in for the hours to be any worse, and a smaller, friendlier operation. Plus, it’s a start-up, so a challenge.”

 

            “Yes,” Claudia said. “And you need a change, don’t deny it.”

 

            “I’m the one who admitted it in the first place,” Lorraine pointed out. “Ian is already sulking.”

 

            Claudia snorted at the idea of easygoing Ian Mackie with his friendly face and wavy brown hair, so unlike anyone’s image of an MI5 officer, sulking at his desk while Lorraine sat at the desk next to him, beavering away at his paperwork and refusing to indulge anything so childish as a fit of the sulks.

 

Lorraine smiled. “He is.”

 

Claudia smiled back at her. “Well, you can go back to the company in a couple of years’ time and he can work for you instead.”

 

Lorraine actually laughed. “And pigs will fly, Claudia.”

 

“What’s that out there?” Claudia asked childishly, pretending to squint out of the window, and they both laughed now.

 

“This must be the slowest service in London,” Lorraine remarked once they’d stopped giggling, glancing at her watch. “Anyway, tell me about the back-up. Military?”

 

“Special Forces.”

 

Lorraine almost smirked. Claudia nearly succumbed to the temptation to throw a napkin at her, but bit her lip and glared futilely instead.

 

“The inestimable Lieutenant Becker isn’t involved! Although, believe you me, there are enough lookers around to make up for it.”

 

“I was hoping for his amazing powers of filing comprehensible reports within hours of the deadline, as opposed to days,” Lorraine said dryly.

 

“I think you might be out of luck there. Captain Ryan will probably get everything in, checked out, ship-shape and Bristol fashion before you’ve even asked him for it, but Lieutenant Lyle... The man’s a _trial_ and I can’t imagine he’s any better faced with bits of paper. There’s a very pretty corporal with green eyes who seems vaguely psychotic to me, and a competent but extremely snippy medic who likes handing out little white pills which seem to cure everything, especially when taken with as much alcohol as possible. Don’t make me go into Private Finn; he poked himself with a tranquiliser dart and had to be taken to hospital.” Claudia sighed. “Those are just the tip of the iceberg...”

 

“Anything I’m likely to struggle with?”

 

Claudia considered her friend, and now colleague. “At first, maybe. It’s not easy.”

 

Lorraine finished her cappuccino, and called for the bill again. “If it was, I’d want to know what the catch was.”

 

Claudia started as her phone went off in her handbag, and she grabbed the bag from the floor and rootled through it until she found the phone, then answered it. “Hello... Speaking. Captain _Ryan_?”

 

Lorraine stared a waitress into existence, paid for the meal, and waited patiently, watching Claudia as her face turned ashen and a hand crept up to her mouth. “That’s... Yes. Yes, I understand. As soon as possible. Goodbye.”

 

“What is it?” Lorraine asked, once Claudia had cut the call.

 

Claudia shot a glance at the waitress, who was eavesdropping diligently. “I’ll tell you later. I think you might be about to experience your first day on the job.”

 

“It’s Sunday,” Lorraine pointed out, following her out of the restaurant.

 

“I know,” Claudia said.


	2. Chapter 2

It wasn’t so much that card games and conversations stopped when the tall blond man’s mobile phone rang and he picked it up as that they slowed; there was a brief moment of expectation, of all the men in the room watching his face. His expression changed, and any other activity halted completely, silence falling as the sunshine streamed in through the windows. The expectation heightened as he ended the call and tucked the phone into his pocket and grabbed his jacket, waiting for him to speak, everyone tenser than the situation would seem to call for to any observer.

 

“Shout,” Ryan said unemotionally, moving faster than his voice implied, gathering his kit and throwing various bits of other people’s to their owners; an array of newly-polished knives was swept off a table and into various sheathes, lethal-looking rifles and stubby handguns checked and holstered. “Some kid, half eaten by some _thing_.”

 

“Shit,” Lieutenant Lyle observed, throwing down a winning hand, seizing the car keys and heading out. “And we were having such a nice, quiet weekend. Mind out, Temple,” he added in the half-exasperated, half what-the-hell-did-we-do-to-deserve-you, slightly affectionate tone that was fast becoming second nature to all the soldiers around Connor Temple, as the younger man tripped on the stair carpet and hurtled down the stairs, head-first, to land sprawling at Lyle’s feet.

 

“Oh, God, _Connor_ ,” Abby Maitland said, charging down the stairs after him, jacket in one hand, pausing by Connor to tie her shoelaces and then offering him a business-like hand, hauling him up, and pushing him out of the door, through the mass of people flooding out to get to the jeeps. “Why are you such a klutz? You’ll break your neck if you don’t start looking where you’re going.”

 

            Connor, still clutching his laptop in its case, tried in indignant tones to explain that the hole in the stair carpet (or yesterday’s tree root, or the quicksand from the Jurassic last week) had definitely not been his fault in any way, to check his beloved laptop for fall-related damage and keep moving at a pace Abby approved of, all at the same time. Given the way she was still pushing him along, he wasn’t having any marked success.

 

            “I’m just trying to say,” he complained, apparently unaware that everyone was ignoring him, “that it’s not my fault, yeah? I mean, just because you saw me fall down the stairs at uni that time doesn’t mean I fall down stairs all the time. I mean, Tom tripped me!”

 

            “Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Abby said absently, shoving extra hard to get him into the car and following him. “Oh, no, mister, _you’re_ sitting in the middle. I was there yesterday when we drove halfway to bloody Land’s End!”

 

            “Stephen and Professor Cutter-“

 

            “Are not going to sit in the middle. And neither am I.”

 

            “But you’ve got the smallest-“  


            “If you’re about to make a remark about my backside, _don’t_.”

 

            Connor shut up, shifted into the middle seat, and looked sheepish. Ryan, in the driving seat, tapped his fingers against the steering wheel with undisguised impatience.

 

“Where’s the professor?” he demanded eventually.

 

Abby looked at him. “Does he kn-“

 

“Yes, I sent Hart to get him.”

 

“He’s there,” Connor said, jerking his head at the two men emerging from the Mitchells’ hotel, one of whom was struggling into a battered coat that might originally have been green while ranting at the other, the arm already in the jacket waving indiscriminately.

 

Captain Ryan leant over and opened the passenger door. “Get a move on, Professor!”

 

The professor appeared not to have heard. Stephen Hart increased his pace slightly, with an apologetic look and smile at Ryan and a pointed comment to Cutter. Abby strained to catch the details of Cutter’s rant.

 

“- _damn_ the man, going on about my students at this _of all times_ , and Sally Andrews is a brat and her dissertation’s sh-“ 

 

“Come on, Nick,” Stephen said, propelling him into the front passenger seat, whereupon Cutter twisted in his seat and continued to rant.

 

“ _Seatbelt_ , Professor,” Ryan said through gritted teeth. Abby wondered if they were due a repetition of the (by now infamous) incident in which the captain had knocked Cutter out with a handgun, and decided that if that happened she would welcome it.

 

As if it was an irritating inconvenience, Cutter did up his seatbelt. “And he’s threatening to cut our funding _again_ , as if evolutionary zoology didn’t get twice the undergrads classical civilisation does!”

 

“Nick, he did this last year, and he never followed through,” Stephen said soothingly, as Ryan took a corner with unnecessary violence. “You know he just does it to wind you up.”

 

Ryan muttered something that Abby was fairly convinced translated as ‘my new favourite person’. From the tiny, secretive little grin Stephen shot him, he’d heard it as well.

 

“Besides,” Stephen continued. “I’d be very surprised if he argued with the size of the grant Lester’s arranged.”

 

Professor Cutter descended into incensed muttering, and Stephen sat back, looking out of the  window at the scenery whizzing by; Lieutenant Lyle was setting the pace in the jeep in front, and clearly felt that they needed to make up for lost time.

 

“Ryan,” Abby said cautiously. “What is it?”

 

“The shout?” Since Hopston welcomed careful drivers, the jeep in front braked sharply and Ryan swore as he braked and they all shot forward in their seats. “Some kid found dead. Mauled, dragged under a bush, half-eaten. The local police are having knickerfits.”

 

Connor made a gagging noise. “Don’t you dare be sick!” Abby said. “Where?”

 

“In a bit of local woodland, quite a way from here.” Ryan crawled through the tail end of Hopston, nearly losing track of the jeep in front, which had just shot onto the dual carriageway, maintaining only a vague relationship with the speed limit. “You fucking _nutcase_.”

 

Abby took this as a comment on Lyle’s driving, rather than her actions, and leaned back against the window, staring mindlessly out onto the motorway and wishing she’d brought a waterproof; it looked like the nice weather was going to break mid-anomaly, again. It was a bit like a fire-drill at school: you knew that it might be cold or wet while you had to stand outside, but you still reacted to the impersonal screech of the fire bell by jumping up, dropping pens and textbooks, and going out to stand in cross, shivering huddles on the playground, rather than picking up the jumper that had fallen off the back of your chair before you went. 

 

“I Spy?” Stephen suggested.

 

“We played that last time,” Connor said, doing inadvisable things with the cigarette lighter and his laptop charger, “and we had an argument about the rules.”

 

“Temple, get your hands _away_ from the gearstick,” Captain Ryan intoned, in a voice of enforced patience.

 

“Sorry,” Connor said guiltily.

 

“Wink Murder?” Stephen persisted.

 

Ryan changed lane. “Not if you’re going to kill me while I’m driving, no.”

 

“Besides,” Abby pointed out, “there’re only five of us, it’d be too obvious. Connor, your _elbows_.”

 

“Sorry,” Connor repeated, removing one pointy, half-starved-student elbow from Abby’s kidney.

 

“Never Have I Ever?” Stephen suggested.

 

“No,” Abby said firmly.

 

An expression passed over Stephen’s face that suggested he remembered the last game of that they’d played, which had ended with Abby making a number of lurid threats, all of which she appeared to be entirely capable of carrying out. “Okay, no.”

 

There was a silence. Connor cleared his throat, typed a long string of html into his laptop, accidentally crashed the style sheet he was rewriting, and jabbed Stephen in the side with his other elbow while trying to mend the damage. “Did anyone else see the Doctor Who on Saturday?”

 

“ _No_!” everyone shouted.

 

 

It was a half-asleep and highly bored team that drew up in a small and muddy car park an hour later. The weather had broken, and Abby peered disconsolately at the drizzle before clambering out, followed by Connor, who almost dropped his laptop. Stephen yawned and stretched – Abby didn’t miss the way Ryan’s eyes flew to the strip of skin revealed between t-shirt and jeans, and fought a grin – and did up his coat, then got out of the way as the third and final jeep parked inelegantly beside them.

 

Abby stuffed her hands into the pockets her thin jacket and stared around as the others piled out of the cars and organised themselves. The car park was empty, apart from the team’s jeeps and one police car, incongruously bright in the dull greyness. Two policemen were standing by the bonnet, grim-faced in yellow fluorescent jackets; neither of them came over to speak to the team, and Abby wished that Claudia was here, rather than in London, doing unknown Home Office-type things with Lester. Not only were her Cutter-control skills almost unbeatable, but she also could, and did, manage suspicious policemen, frustrated nurses, and irate members of the Women’s Institute without ever running out of soothingly official platitudes. She would have known exactly what to say to the policemen.

 

In a few moments – although it seemed like hours to Abby – Captain Ryan corralled men and academics, and led a group over to the policemen. One of them stirred, and held out a hand to him. It was smeared with blood, but Ryan shook it as if he didn’t notice. “Detective Inspector Benson. Are you the government lot?”

 

Ryan nodded. DI Benson gave them all a comprehensive once-over, lingering on the length of Abby’s skirt, Connor’s dishevelled air, and the number of guns sprouting from various holsters and cradled lovingly in arms, and then looked dubious. Ryan looked impassive.

 

“Where’s the body?” he said.

 

Benson nodded at the patch of woodland. “It’s about twenty minutes’ walk into the wood, not far off one of the footpaths- we haven’t moved it. The kid wasn’t a local – his parents were driving down into Wales, they only stopped here for a break.”

 

“Nice weather for it,” muttered an unidentifiable soldier. Abby trod heavily on his foot.

 

Benson cast whoever it was behind Abby a sharp look, and continued: “His sister wasn’t feeling great, and while their parents were talking to her about it – trying to work out if she had the flu, or something worse, or was just trying to skive off a family visit – he wandered off, straight into the woods.” He hesitated, and his jaw set, making him look even more obstinate. “Fast-moving kid, for a five-year-old.”

 

Cutter hissed sharply through his teeth, and Connor almost dropped his laptop. It wasn’t the first time children had got caught in the anomaly chaos, but it never stopped coming as a shock to all concerned.

 

Benson nodded sharply. “The area’s cordoned off and we’ve got people at all the gates into the woodland. PC Fox will show you where the body is.” He cast a glance at the younger policeman, who looked singularly reluctant, but moved away from the group towards a gap in the hedge between the car park and the woodland.

 

They followed the policeman into the little woodland, along a small path that was more a reasonably holly bush-free bit of ground that a lot of people had found convenient for walking on, and into a dip in the ground mostly surrounded by a thicket. It probably qualified as a clearing, on a good day.

 

“Where-” Connor started to say, and sniffed, frowning with his eyes darting from side to side, as if he’d smelt something unpleasant. The policeman, face like stone, cut him off by bending down to remove a sheet of plastic over a particularly bushy bit of thicket and pointing to darker patches on the leaf-littered soil. Abby swallowed hard, and Stephen went forward, going soundlessly down to sit on his haunches and touch the stains.

 

“Blood,” he confirmed. “A day or two old.” He reached out gently to lift up the trailing, thorny fronds of thicket, and gave a sharp intake of breath. Cutter followed him, kneeling down with a grunt and a popping sound from his knee, and then retreated sharply, cursing in a suddenly thick Scottish accent. Abby hung back.

 

“I can’t see much,” Stephen said, voice strangled. “I can’t tell-“

 

Captain Ryan produced a pencil torch from his tac vest, and handed it over without comment. Stephen turned it on, and shone it under the bush, giving Abby a glimpse of small limbs and blood and torn jumper, Thomas the Tank Engine grinning blindly at her through a mask of staining blood and worse for a brief, macabre second. Connor made a high-pitched sound. Automatically, Abby removed his laptop from his hands, so he could go and throw up in a bush without encumbrance.

 

Stephen looked up at the captain, face pale, voice anguished. “I still can’t- I’m going to-“

 

“Oh you’re not,” Connor exclaimed, and the policeman muttered something about scenes of the crime and how you weren’t meant to disturb them.

 

“Bush,” Abby said automatically. “Not my shoes. Or your shoes.”

 

Stephen shot the policeman a filthy look, which Cutter reinforced as if it was a habit to do so, a shared intimidation tactic. “This is the scene of a wild animal attack. You’re not going to be looking for an axe murderer. There will be no fingerprints, but there may be some remnants of tracks – providing your colleagues haven’t trodden all over anything the rain might have left – and there may be something in the... method of killing that can tell us what kind of creature was responsible. Connor, turn around if this is going to make you feel sick.”

 

There was a slight rustle as Connor turned around, and as Stephen handed the pencil torch up to Cutter, lifted up fronds of thicket, and so carefully, so gently, started to move the corpse. After a second, Ryan crouched down to help him, a pair of big men lifting a child’s tiny bloodied corpse like the most precious thing on earth and laying it down in plain sight. Abby felt Connor shake beside her, and breathe noisily, but he didn’t throw up. Cutter muttered something appalled, and Stephen’s full mouth was set in a thin, hard line. Abby couldn’t see Ryan’s face and she couldn’t move to look; her feet were set on the soft ground, as if ice swathed her body from the hips down, rendering her motionless, cooling her sluggish blood. She did not feel sick, but numbed. The mind that had been such a whizz at zoology until the lack of practical work bored her past endurance labelled the corpse a kill, an anonymous source of nutrients that just happened to be wearing a mangled Thomas the Tank Engine shirt, ratty white trainers and little jeans elasticated at the waist. _Kill_ , she repeated to herself, like a mantra. _Not someone’s kid. Kill..._

 

The policeman turned abruptly and blustered away a little.

 

“Mind out for nettles,” Abby said dully, and registered the thin white gleam of bone, the bruising of the boy’s neck and eyes starting from his head, the stink of putrefaction, and the maroon brown of dried blood.

 

A fly buzzed in the wet air as Stephen’s long-fingered hands moved carefully over the corpse, peeling back a slice of shirt to show claw marks, to measure the space between them, checking the skull with infinitely delicate fingers for soft areas, puncture marks, examining the pattern of the bruising. Talking to either Cutter or Captain Ryan or both or no-one at all, murmuring aloud about canines and prey, his voice soft, his skin slowly picking up patches of sticky red. “Abby,” he said once, “animals that kill with canines, through suffocation-” not phrasing it as a question, but speaking it as one.

 

Abby shut her eyes and opened them again, rubbing her hands against the fabric of her skirt. “Big cats,” she said, and her voice was too loud. “Not jaguars or leopards; they kill by piercing the skull with their canines. This is a hunting method more typical of lions, tigers, but whatever it is, it’d have to be relatively small, to get under there.”

 

“That’s what I thought,” Stephen said, sounding half-dreaming, and his hands dangled loosely as he looked down at the child, blue eyes blank and strangely terrible. Then he shook his head, sharp and almost angry. “I’ve learnt all I can from this.”    

 

The policeman returned, pastier than before and smelling faintly of vomit. “Back with us, PC Fox?” Ryan said, not actually paying the man any attention as he helped Stephen put the body back and flicked the sheet of plastic over the bush. “Come on, Hart, Cutter. Temple, Miss Maitland. PC Fox. The lads will have searched the wood by now.”

 

They walked back towards the vehicles in silence. When they were halfway there, Stephen spoke suddenly. “What was his name?”

 

The policeman stopped. “What?”

 

“What was his name, I said. The boy’s name.”

 

The policeman blinked at Stephen, and Abby saw that his ears stuck out and his eyes were large and guileless. He looked like he’d be a country bobby in twenty years’ time, genial and respected with a nice wife and two nice kids, never dealing with anything more scandalous than a couple of half-hearted vandals, sometimes dreaming of a little boy’s body and a lot of blood and never talking about it. “I don’t know, sir,” he said now.

 

“You should know,” Stephen said, almost an accusation, and walked on very fast. Captain Ryan cursed.

 

“One of his funny turns,” Cutter said, and it should have been said with resignation, but actually managed in six flat syllables to suggest that Stephen was right and the policeman was no more than a squashed earwig on the sole of his shoe. “Stephen!” he yelled. “Stephen, don’t get away from the group...”  


“I think it’s a lost cause, professor,” Captain Ryan said. He sounded tired, and on a whim, Abby looked at his hands, and the patches of blood on them, and wondered if he had a child, or if it was just the general desolation that was bothering him.

 

They got to the car-park, and found Stephen standing by the jeep, looking at his hands and ignoring Lieutenant Owen’s increasingly snippy orders. Abby jogged ahead, found a bottle of water in the back of the jeep, persuaded Private Finn to take his hands off his beloved rifle long enough to crack the cap open because her fingers were stiff and numb, and took it round to Stephen. The bottle fizzed as she unscrewed the cap completely, and she poured a little over Stephen’s hands. He raised his head to look at her.

 

“Rub them together,” she said, and added, “Your hands,” when he seemed to need clarification.

 

“Oh,” Stephen murmured, and rubbed one over the other, hesitantly.

 

“Give it some welly,” Abby ordered in the exhorting tone she imagined Claudia might have used in the same situation, although probably not on the words ‘give it some welly’, and poured a little more water over his hands.

 

Stephen started to scrub his hands in the bursts of cold water splattering to the ground, until they were clean. He asked for more when Abby stopped, and Abby couldn’t think of how to say no, so she gave it to him, and blessed every lucky star she had when Captain Ryan came over and she could switch without asking to tipping water over his still-bloodied hands.

 

“Stay with the group in future, Hart,” Captain Ryan said, without any real bite in his words. Stephen just nodded, shook his hands off, and went away with his shoulders bent.

 

“You can’t blame him,” Abby muttered, feeling impelled to stand up for Stephen. “He was just handling a corpse,” and then she felt like an idiot, because Ryan had been, too. “Sorry.”

 

Ryan jerked his head sharply, as if to say _don’t worry about it_ , and then added, “Thanks, Miss Maitland,” dried his hands on his combats and started to move away.

 

“Captain Ryan,” Abby called after him, feeling small. He stopped. “I’d... My name’s Abby, you know.”

 

Captain Ryan’s lips quirked. “I wouldn’t want to wear it out, miss.”

 

Abby experienced a brief moment of intense frustration, twisted the cap shut on the bottle, and added loudly: “And I’m sure he’d prefer it if you called him Stephen, too.”

 

It was worth it just to see Captain Ryan twitch.


	3. Chapter 3

 

            “You’ll need things,” Claudia said as she flagged down a taxi. Claudia’s flat in the further reaches of Chelsea and Lorraine’s in Putney were slow bus-rides apart, and Sir James – who Lorraine still hadn’t seen outside an interview room – had demanded in a second phone-call that they meet him in half an hour in Battersea, which had led Claudia to remonstrate and batter him down to meeting them at Claudia’s flat in Chelsea, but they still hadn’t much time.

 

“And by ‘things’ you mean...” Lorraine prompted, buckling up her seatbelt. “Lime Gardens Square, Putney,” she added for the benefit of the taxi driver, who looked enlightened and swung out into the main flow of traffic.

 

Claudia shrugged. “Clothes, a small washbag, any things you might need to set up a working office.”

 

Lorraine’s expression suggested that if she’d been drinking something, she would have spat it out.

 

Claudia sighed. “I told you it was a very small, amateurish operation. Lester told you it was a small, amateurish operation, in longer and rather ruder words. Look, Lorraine, do you have a laptop?”

 

Lorraine nodded.

 

“So just bring that, the charger, a notebook and some pens and you’ll be more organised than anyone else. Apart from that...” Claudia pulled a face. “The downside of this job is that you never know where you’re going to be next or for how long. This in particular looks like a tricky one – I’ll explain when we’re in your flat. Bring smart-casual things. You might need to be able to pass as a businesswoman sometimes, but again, a pair of clean jeans renders you smarter than almost anyone there.”

 

“What have I let myself in for?” Lorraine enquired, not sounding very bothered.

 

The other woman allowed herself a small smile, rolled her eyes, and shoved a chunk of auburn hair behind one neat ear.  “The madhouse.”

 

“I should have brought my own straitjacket,” Lorraine said, and Claudia noted with some relief that Lorraine’s internal spirit level had absorbed the concept of a makeshift office and returned to normal.  Lorraine leant forward, oblivious to Claudia’s reflections, and tapped the glass. “Just here, please. The big building with the black doors. Thank you.”

 

They got out of the taxi and Claudia paid, before following Lorraine up the short flight of steps and into a building of Victorian proportions. Just inside there was a fairly large, draughty hall with a hard floor, on one side of which was a lilac front door with the bronze letter A  and a knocker on it, and on the other the beginning of a large wrought-iron staircase, which the two women climbed. Two flights took them past a pale yellow front door labelled B, and up to a pale pink front door labelled C. Lorraine stopped in front of this one, produced a second key and opened the door, letting them both in.

 

“Nice flat,” Claudia said, and meant it. “Did you move in recently? You were living in Clapham before, weren’t you?”

 

“Yes,” Lorraine said, disabling the alarm and shutting the door. “I’d had enough of the neighbours. Excuse the splattered walls, I’m repainting.”

 

“Repainting?” Claudia questioned, watching as Lorraine sorted out laptop, charger and a variety of interestingly tangled cables, and packed most of this into a laptop bag.

 

“Repainting,” Lorraine confirmed, choosing a large black notebook, a fountain pen and cartridges, a propelling pencil and several biros and tipping the lot into the laptop bag as well, adding a copy of the Financial Times and a book almost as an afterthought and making Claudia think wistfully of the unread _Tatler_ sitting on her kitchen table. “It’s all tasteful cream walls now, which is... tasteful and I don’t object exactly, but it’s boring. I thought I’d have a week or two between leaving the Firm and taking up this new job. I actually meant to get it done when I moved in, before I unpacked, but there was a problem, and as usual the police left such an appalling mess behind Ian and I were all but working nights... There are still cardboard boxes around. Mind your feet.”

 

Claudia forbore to mention the lack of redecoration time afforded by the anomaly project, and glanced anxiously at her watch, but Lorraine was doing an impression of a tornado on speed and was bearing down on her bedroom. Claudia trailed after her, and stood in the doorway, watching Lorraine pack and occasionally suggesting or vetoing. “You won’t need much smart, to be honest, it’s hardly Thames House. We stay at a hotel – the Mitchells’ hotel, it’s very comfortable, you’ll like Jim and Mary Mitchell – and work out of there... I’d bring a pair of heels if I were you. Useful for overawing petty bureaucrats.”  


“We are petty bureaucrats,” Lorraine pointed out, riffling through her underwear drawer. “Tell me what has Sir James so stirred up he wants us in wherever it is now, at... three o’clock on a Sunday.”

 

“The Forest of Dean,” Claudia supplied. “It’s basically the centre of all this... anomaly activity.”

 

“Rips in space and time, yes, you mentioned,” Lorraine said, taking down a small weekend bag and filling it.

 

Claudia made an agreeing noise, and thought to herself for about the hundredth time that this was, in fact, the basic truth of the anomaly project, and that there wasn’t really much you could say to it. She had a sudden mental image of her mother, large genteel bovine eyes in a body and clothing like a blowsy pink rose, hopelessly administering afternoon tea and looking as if she’d just uttered words that she couldn’t quite believe encompassed a piece of everyday life, such as ‘foreplay’.  ‘Oh, darling Claudia, yes; working for the _Home Office_ now, would you believe it, such a clever girl. Working with rips in space and time... I do think it’s a very _advanced_ field, I’m afraid I don’t _quite_ understand it. More tea, vicar?’

 

Claudia was shocked out of her reverie by the sound of Lorraine pointedly shutting the bathroom door, washbag in hand, and remarking: “What about the Forest of Dean?”

 

“Something’s eating five-year-olds in it,” Claudia answered, more bluntly than she meant to.

 

Lorraine dropped the washbag, sending toothbrush and shampoo rolling all over the floor. “ _What_?”

 

“Well, not quite in the Forest of Dean,” Claudia clarified. “Some way out, actually. The local police found a boy’s body under a bush. His family had called him in missing...”

 

Lorraine picked up her things, collected them into the washbag, stuffed it into the weekend bag and zipped the lot up with unnecessary force. “Are we going to be called on to examine the body?”  


“I hope to God not,” Claudia said devoutly. “They’ve already had a look, so I don’t see why we’d need to. There was no anomaly in the wood he was found in, apparently, but there’s nothing in England that could kill like that, not in this century, anyway. Ruling out escapees from private collections - that’ll be your job and mine – it has to be something that came through an anomaly.”

 

Lorraine was silent for a moment, and then hefted the weekend bag and her laptop bag. “How horrible,” she said conclusively.

 

Claudia glanced at her watch again. They hadn’t much time, and Sir James would be unbearable if they were late. “Have you got everything?”

 

“Yes,” Lorraine said, and locked up the flat and followed Claudia downstairs, out of the house and towards the nearest road big enough to boast a decent complement of taxis.

 

***

 

Shortly after returning to the Mitchells’ hotel and reminding Ditzy to drop a word in Mary Mitchell’s ear about not letting the kids out of her sight while outside for a bit, Captain Ryan had put in a call to Sir James Lester. He had done so reluctantly, because Sir James was a bugger for shooting the messenger and allowing leave based mostly on who had annoyed him most lately, and hauling him out of the Home Counties on a Sunday was likely to mean that Ryan wouldn’t get any leave until Christmas. Still, if Professor Cutter told Lester about the boy, the conversation was likely to end in Lester ordering a hit, so Ryan rang the man up, gave the necessary details in thirty seconds flat and listened patiently to what felt like half an hour of violent and elegant invective, both the potency and relative cleanliness of which was explained by a dimly-heard “Dad, who are you being mean to?” He felt bad, dragging Lester away from his son or daughter (the voice could have been any young teenager) on a weekend, but it had to be done. Murderous medium-sized cats - Miss Maitland and Hart had eventually come down in favour of something slightly larger than a puma with big canines - running around the area weren’t likely to do anyone good, and Hart had been very firm in saying that unless the cat met with a fatal accident in the next few days, it would certainly kill again.

 

It wasn’t as bad as it could have been in the end, Ryan thought to himself, hunting down the nearest Mitchell to inform them of their new guests, although the idea of breaking in another civil servant was unfortunate. Miss Brown was all right, and Sir James was a pain but efficient and useful in his own way, but heaven alone knew what this Miss Wickes would be like. A bean-counter, probably, given that Sir James had spat something about ‘regulating the inefficiencies and ill-deeds of this wretched excuse for a government operation’. Hopefully she’d be too occupied trying to manage Cutter to be too difficult.

 

Ryan found Jim Mitchell, told him about the imminent arrivals, and went back to his room, skirting the resumed card game. He meant to write a birthday card to his daughter, but his mind slipped all too easily to the semi-silent yet volatile Stephen Hart, and exactly what Miss Maitland had meant when she’d said that Hart would probably be quite pleased if Ryan called him Stephen.

 

Other than winding him up, that is.

 

***

 

Sir James arrived on the dot at half past three, brusque, irritable and prepared to break the speed limit. Not thirty seconds earlier, Claudia had zipped her own bag shut with a triumphant smile, and declared that Sir James could be as rude as he liked - she was ready. Then, of course, he rang up and was rude, and Lorraine couldn’t help noticing that Claudia, carrying her weekend bag into the lift and attempting to soothe Sir James down the phone, was becoming increasingly ruffled anyway; this didn’t bode well for Sir James as an employer.

 

They put their weekend bags into the boot and climbed into an almost immaculate Mercedes in understated British racing green, chased all the way by Sir James’ unpleasant commentary, and Lorraine immediately took solace from the small smears of mud on the back of the front seat where someone not entirely clean had sat and kicked the seat in front with muddy feet, and the Batman symbol hanging from the rear view mirror which Claudia was carefully refraining from mentioning. Clearly Sir James had kids who didn’t quite suit his notions of tidiness.

 

Sir James continued to argue with Claudia all the way to the M25, where either Sir James’ temper died down or Claudia’s powers of persuasion smoothed over whatever had been his problem in the first place (as far as Lorraine could see, the indignity of being forced to pick up his PA and his operations manager, the inconvenience of being forced to leave London on a Sunday, imaginary incompetence on the part of Claudia and Captain Ryan, the traffic and the sad deterioration of the BBC had started out as separate grievances, become thoroughly entangled, and were now nothing more than a bad excuse for a rant). Lorraine, who preferred to quit jobs rather than get fired, stayed quiet and looked out of the window, idly people-watching and keeping one ear on the debate in the front of the car. When it gave way to a call to Sir James’ mobile, transferred to Claudia, she paid careful attention to that, and deduced that Cutter – the scientist Claudia had mentioned earlier? It must be – was a nuisance with few practical instincts that didn’t involve fossils, and that everyone from Sir James to Captain Ryan thought so. Lorraine, sensible to a fault, reserved judgement. Apart from anything else, since retrieving the _Financial Times_ in order to read it would probably start Sir James off again, she had almost nothing else to do.

 

The weather was relatively mild, with no rain and good visibility; the traffic was good so far, since anyone leaving the city for the weekend hadn’t quite got up the courage to return to the daily grind. It was therefore almost inevitable that Sir James escaped the M25, found a clear stretch of motorway and opened the throttle, sending the high-powered car whizzing into Surrey with an audible roar. Claudia didn’t even bother to remonstrate, although Lorraine could feel her becoming stiff with disapproval, and Lorraine assumed that this was common practice when anomalies turned up in far-flung parts of the country. She didn’t remonstrate either, at first because she felt that interrupting Sir James would be far more dangerous than letting him continue and that the police would eventually pull him over, and later because she felt much too sick. As a rule, she was only sick on boats, but Sir James’ reckless speed, abrupt braking for the avoidance of other cars, villages, and speed cameras, and occasional descent into winding country lanes managed to recreate quite accurately the misery of any time spent on the water. Lorraine could feel ill on a ferry in dock; she now felt as if she was on the Cutty Sark in a hurricane.

 

 Sir James’ miraculous powers of police-evasion and cruel driving continued all the way to the Forest of Dean, where he condescended to slow for a town, then rapidly hiked up the speed as he left it and started to navigate more bloody country lanes and more bloody tree-lined roads. Claudia twisted in her seat and stared worriedly at Lorraine. “Are you all right?” she asked.

 

Lorraine clenched her teeth and remained silent.

 

“It’s only a bit further,” Claudia said comfortingly, and turned back again. “Sir James, don’t you think tha-“

 

“I’m concentrating on the road,” Sir James said with awful, frosty patience. “Distraction will not be tolerated.”

 

Lorraine’s unhelpful mind flew immediately to the third piece of humanity about the well-maintained monster of a car she was currently sitting in: the radio, which when Claudia had turned it on had automatically come on to Capital FM, followed by Heart 106.2 and Radio 1 as Claudia flicked through the channels in increasing embarrassment and confusion, Sir James growing visibly more irritated and possibly embarrassed all the while. Lorraine thought cattily that someone definitely forced Sir James to tolerate distraction, and deduced at least one teenager, but the recollection didn’t make her feel nearly as sympathetic towards Sir James now as it had earlier, and it only distracted her for a little while from the overpowering need to be violently ill. Tall, leafy trees, just turning autumn colours, and grey tarmac road flashed past, occasionally interrupted by another car, and then Sir James made a sharp right and hauled the car through an open wooden gate onto a gravel drive, and parked the Mercedes with some style just in front of the door of a nice hotel.

 

Lorraine, some part of her dizzily thinking that it was possible that Sir James organised his life for the obstruction of others, bolted out of the door, slammed it shut behind her, and took deep breaths with her eyes shut and her back resting against the cool metal of the car. She completely failed to notice the tall, broad-shouldered man with sandy blond hair, who eyed her with confusion for half a second before explaining to a frosty Sir James why his presence was so vital at this time on a Sunday.

 

Claudia came over to her, and reached out anxiously to touch her shoulder. “Lorraine, are y-“  


“Do not touch me,” Lorraine said through gritted teeth. “Do not talk to me. Or _I will be sick all over you_.”  

 

There followed a brief pause while Claudia took all the bags out of the boot and Sir James began to discuss the incident with the half-eaten child of the tall man. Then Lorraine turned to Claudia and said, with more accusation than she meant to, “You didn’t tell me Sir James drove like _that_.”

 

“No,” Claudia admitted. “I didn’t expect you to need to know just yet... I’m so sorry, Lorraine, and your first day on the job, too. It _was_ an emergency.”

 

“It’s all right,” Lorraine said with resignation, and jerked her head almost imperceptibly at the tall man and raised her eyebrows.

 

Claudia took the cue and answered quietly: “Captain Ryan. He’s nice.” Both women shuddered in a sudden burst of wind, feeling in need of extra jumpers in the evening cool, and waited for further instructions. They came rather sooner than they expected.

 

“Miss Wickes, whenever you feel like doing your job,” Sir James drawled, with more than a hint of ice in his words.

 

All the carefully tamped down resentment of the past few hours – being taken out of London at such short notice, the boredom of the car journey, Sir James’ skilful, but inconsiderate driving – boiled up in Lorraine, and she shocked and upset herself by turning sharply, glaring at Sir James and snapping back: “Sir James, whenever you ask me to do it!”


	4. Chapter 4

 “Oh, my God,” Lorraine moaned, sounding traumatised. “I can’t believe I did that!”

 

Claudia laughed at her over her coffee. “Why not? He deserved it!”  


“It was unprofessional,” Lorraine said, sipping her own coffee and shaking her head. “I cannot believe- _three whole years_ at the Firm, and I crack in _one day_ here!”

 

“There, there,” Claudia said kindly, patting Lorraine’s hand and ruining the effect by bursting into giggles. “Oh, Lorraine, it was beautifully done.”

 

Lorraine merely looked disconsolate and vanished into her coffee, unaware that the story of her snub to Sir James was being repeated around the entire building, cherished by the hotel owners’ children, laughed over by Stephen Hart and Nick Cutter, and explained twice to Private Floyd who hadn’t quite heard the first time. In truth, she couldn’t have done anything better to persuade the denizens of the anomaly project that she was on their side. Sir James had been struck almost dumb by her retort, and had hesitated long enough that no blistering rejoinder would quite have worked, so instead he’d stamped off to call a general meeting in order to spread the misery around a bit.

 

Having taken their bags in, got the key to their room from Jim Mitchell – they were sharing a twin room, since the Mitchells’ hotel was bursting at the seams – and unpacked, Claudia and Lorraine had just about managed to suffer creditably through the general meeting, even though Lorraine could barely put names to faces and Sir James was working off his bad mood on Claudia. Happily for all concerned, Nick had taken up Claudia’s defence, and Sir James had obligingly swapped targets and was excruciatingly unpleasant to the professor instead, which brought Stephen into battle. After five minutes of dealing simultaneously with Nick and Stephen, Sir James had developed a headache and dispersed the meeting.

 

He was still upstairs now, which had led to a general exodus: everyone, including the Mitchell children, was downstairs, the soldiers in the games room having a pool tournament and mocking the losers mercilessly, Abby giving her professional opinion on a newt a Mitchell kid had brought in, Cutter reading a scientific journal and saying “Ha!” in a scornful, gleeful voice every time he found something he disagreed with in an article on bipedalism in theropods, a noisy and irritating habit of his; Connor always claimed that somewhere locked away was a stash of scientific journals with underlining and catty notes in the margin in Cutter’s handwriting. If nothing else, this provided an opportunity for Lorraine to meet and talk to people, and also meant that Mary Mitchell was around to dole out coffee, sandwiches and hard-headed sympathy.

 

Lorraine put down her coffee, tucked her feet up onto the comfortable chair she was sitting in  and watched as Connor entered the room, carrying a laptop trailing innumerable wires which he seemed to think he had under control. Then he failed to spot a ruffled edge of a rug, caught a wire around his ankle and fell over with a startled yelp, immediately entangling himself in all the other wires, losing his hat, and wrapping his scarf so tightly around his neck that  it looked like he was about to choke. Lorraine and Claudia got up hurriedly to help him, Claudia sighing “Oh, _Connor_ ,” and began to unwrap the wires, which had knotted themselves inextricably around the student. 

 

He stared up at Lorraine as the scarf was loosened, attempted to organise his thoughts, gave up and blurted: “You’re the one who said that to Lester!”

 

Lorraine went a dull red and accidentally tied a wire around her left wrist. Claudia sighed noisily, pinched the bridge of her nose and undid it. “She’s feeling a little sensitive about that, Connor. Don’t mention it.”

 

Connor, realising he’d discomfited the new girl, went pink himself and began to babble. “I wouldn’t have said anything, it’s just that Sir James is terrifying and he’s always sarcastic to me and I’ve always wished I could get one over on him like that but I always think of the right thing to say when I’ve been out of the room five minutes already, I think that’s called the spirit of the staircase or something like that only in French. Um.”

 

Claudia rolled her eyes at Lorraine over his head and disentangled the last wire. “Up you get,” she said, firmly but kindly. Connor got up, still in some disarray, and immediately dropped his laptop, bent down to pick it up, and nearly fell head-over-heels again. Claudia smiled, and returned to her coffee. “Try not to trip over any blades of grass,” she said dryly, and he blushed harder still.

 

There was really only one thing for it now, and that was to flee the scene of the crime. Connor, with the finely-honed instincts of a natural bullies’ victim, mumbled something and got out of the room as fast as his legs could carry him, missing the ‘Duck Or Grouse’ sign and hitting his head on the low-hanging doorjamb as he went. Soft laughter followed him, and the quiet, mortifying remark: “He reminds me of my little brothers, all elbows and brains.”

 

Connor sank deeper still into humiliation, and made for the room the soldiers had colonised, in order to ask unwittingly ignorant questions about the rules of rugby and be mocked for it. It would be less embarrassing than overhearing Lorraine and Claudia talking about him.

 

***

 

Stephen walked through the hotel, ducking carefully in order to avoid braining himself on the lintels, and promptly caught Connor Temple amidships. This was not as unusual as he might have hoped. Having regained his composure and got some air back into his lungs, he said mildly: “In a hurry, Connor?”

 

Connor, already pink, turned brick-red, mumbled something, and stumbled past him, wrapping a dangling wire around his ankle as he did so. Stephen turned to look after him as the younger man successfully made it to the games room, opened the door and slipped on a stray snooker ball, landing flat on his back with a resounding crash and attracting no little amusement from the men inside. Stephen shut his eyes, shook his head and continued on.

 

Tucked into a corner seat in the bar, he found Claudia Brown and Lorraine Wickes, the woman who had rendered Lester speechless and ingratiated herself with most of the population of the Forest of Dean in one fell swoop, but had clearly suffered a relapse into professionalism and looked thoroughly depressed. Both women had their shoes kicked off and their feet tucked up onto the seat, and an empty, crumb-festooned plate in front of them, as well as two coffee cups; he smiled briefly at them, and attempted to leave the bar, but Miss Brown called him back. “Stephen!” 

 

            In the privacy of his own head, he cursed, knowing that it wouldn’t show up on his face. He turned and put a mild, harmless face on which he suspected looked just a bit gormless. Christ, he _hated_ meeting new people. Undergraduates he could just about manage; undergraduates were all the same one way or another, even accounting for exceptions like Allison, who sent him long emails discussing her medication, her proposed trip to the Amazon, and her condolences on not having been available the previous weekend to pretend to be his girlfriend at an obligatory university function, frequently all in the same paragraph. He didn’t have to be nice to undergraduates either. He was, when he noticed their presence, but the important point was that he didn’t _have_ to be.

 

            Miss Brown had already turned to the other woman, who pasted a professional expression onto her face. “Lorraine, this is Dr Stephen Hart, Cutter’s assistant. He stops Cutter from driving the rest of us entirely mad. Stephen, this is Miss Wickes, Sir James’s PA.”

 

            Miss Wickes stood up and held out a hand, saying calmly and professionally “Pleased to meet you.” She had a decently firm grip, but Stephen couldn’t help noticing that she was wearing socks decorated with little bombs with lit fuses. He obviously wasn’t as subtle as he should have been, because she caught his gaze, glanced down and said dryly: “I have twin younger brothers with interesting senses of humour. Have you been working with Professor Cutter long, Dr. Hart?”

 

            “Eight years,” he said. He liked the sound of this woman, and she seemed pleasant enough in person, but he wasn’t keen on small talk. Hastily, he dredged up his well-behaved company manners from the bottom of his mental filing cabinet and found something to say. “I take it you joined us recently?”

 

            “Two weeks ago,” Miss Wickes said. “And I can’t say I anticipated my job actually _starting_ this week. I’ve only just finished serving my notice.”

 

            Stephen couldn’t stop his eyebrows going up. “You were headhunted, then?”

 

            “In a manner of speaking,” Miss Wickes said, with a smile that suggested she wouldn’t be giving further details, and instantly firing Stephen with curiosity as to where she’d been working previously.

 

            He resolved to consult the grapevine, and shifted as if he needed to move. “Excuse me, but...”

 

            Miss Wickes raised a hand quickly, and moved back to her seat. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to keep you. It was nice to meet you, Dr Hart.”

 

            “You too,” he said equably, flashed her a lightning smile so she wouldn’t think he actively disliked her and wanted to get out of her company so fast, and went away.

 

This time, he forgot to duck his head before going through the door. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Miss Wickes’ face assume an unnatural blankness, and Miss Brown drop her head into her hands, her shoulders shaking with laughter. Through the ache across his forehead, he remembered something Miss Brown had said to him once - _for such an educated man, Stephen, you’re very stupid_ – and thought of the apparent closeness between Miss Wickes and Miss Brown. He sighed slightly, took the stairs up to his room three steps at a time, and attempted to resign himself to being thought of as just a pretty face, again.

 

It didn’t work very well.

 

***

 

The woman got out of her car, slipped a small rucksack onto her back and slammed the door shut. She took a map and a GPS out of the rucksack and looked around her, at the muddy grass verge she’d parked on, the heavy metal gate and the stile beside it, and tried to work out where the hell she was meant to be going next. When her nephew had suggested this as an interesting way to get fit, she hadn’t anticipated getting so sucked into it that she’d actually bought her own equipment, rather than borrowing it. Nor had she anticipated trudging through muddy fields and woods of her own accord. It did a number on her Cath Kidston wellies.

 

The GPS told her that the cache was somewhere up the hill beneath which she had parked, in the wooded area at the top. With a sigh, she climbed over the stile and followed the public footpath up to the top of the field, where she climbed another stile, circumvented a herd of sheep, cautiously let herself through another metal gate and found herself at the top of the hill and just inside the wooded area.

 

She wouldn’t have gone so far as to call it a _wood_. It was small, really just a patch of trees, mostly used for dog walking (she could see paw marks in the ground) and probably only a remnant, once connected to the outlying edge of the Forest of Dean some miles south and west. She spared herself a moment for an internal rant about the destruction of British woodland, then continued into the patch of trees, looking for the cache. It was somewhere low to the ground, or so she’d been told, so she kept an eye on the leaf-strewn floor.

 

After a moment, she came to an abrupt halt, and crouched down. She would be damned if those were a dog’s paw-prints. They were far too large and reminiscent of a cat’s and –

 

She stood up rather abruptly, suddenly aware that she was presenting a very small and therefore vulnerable target to anything that might be in the vicinity, and then laughed at herself. For God’s sake, what was she doing? She wasn’t a stupid, superstitious teenager; Britain had no wildlife larger than a wild boar and even those weren’t likely to hurt you if you kept well away and didn’t startle them. What was she afraid of?

 

She glanced down at the paw marks again. Perhaps they weren’t as large as she had thought at first. “A Great Dane’s,” she said with more confidence than she felt. “Obviously.” But her voice shook and quavered, not quite as convinced as the rest of her, and a cold spot prickled between her shoulder blades and at the back of her neck.

 

Nonetheless, she continued to walk, until she came to the exact place dictated by the GPS – and there she found both the cache, and the owner of the paw marks. She could not have said what it was, but it was not a Great Dane, and she noted the sandy, darkly spotted fur and the oversized paws as it toyed with the Tupperware box that had been the cache, a shiny bracelet and a packet of something dark brown and stiff open on the ground, rocks tumbled aside from where the cache had been hidden, and its head swung round and she saw the canines and smelt old blood and she couldn’t help it.

 

She screamed, and she turned, and she ran, and it roared and sprang after her, and she, terrified, ran, and ran, blind with panic, and then she tripped and fell and rolled desperately, reaching for something, anything; but there was nothing to grab, and then there was nothing at all, only blackness and the echo of her last scream.


	5. Chapter 5

Lorraine Wickes stared at the mess of papers and notebooks. Beside her, Claudia winced in anticipation and Sir James tapped his fingers impatiently on the crook of his elbow, arms crossed elegantly.

 

Lorraine swallowed. “How long has the... project been running? On an official footing, that is?” she asked, and was impressed by the steadiness of her own voice.

 

Sir James shrugged one shoulder with the exquisite rudeness of someone who has visited Paris often enough to have picked up a bit of local colour. “Perhaps three months.”

 

Lorraine opened her mouth and shut it abruptly, with a snap of very well-cared-for white teeth.

 

“Well, if that’s all,” Sir James said after a moment, with carefully calibrated impatience, “then there are a number of things I need to attend to as a matter of urgency...”

 

“Claudia,” Lorraine said steadily, ignoring Sir James, “has there been any attempt – any attempt at _all_ – to create some form of coherency in the way this is managed? Not just in administrative terms. The scientists, do they collate data?”

 

“I don’t know,” Claudia told her. “Not from anomaly to anomaly, I don’t think, except possibly on the creatures themselves – there is some interesting magnetic activity, but none of them are physicists, although Connor’s got some interest. He might be doing something.”

 

Lorraine bit the end of her tongue to prevent a swearword escaping. Four months of backlog. Fan _tas_ tic. That would be the catch in a better-paid job with better hours and marginally less lying, then.

 

“You’ve got to understand, Lorraine, this job is one emergency after another,” Claudia explained, shifting on her feet. “We’re dealing with those emergencies. None of us have any time for the bigger picture – that’s why you were hired. None of us have had time to do any admin beyond the occasional expenses form and even those aren’t co-ordinated.” 

 

“I see,” Lorraine said calmly. “This is not, then, a filing system. It is a _working catastrophe_.”

 

“That,” Sir James drawled, “is an accurate description of the project as a whole. Welcome to our merry band, Miss Wickes.” He drifted out, a man o’ war jellyfish in a handmade suit.

 

Both women turned to watch him go, and then met each other’s eyes. Lorraine raised one disapproving eyebrow.

 

“He’s not that bad when you get to know him,” Claudia said helplessly.

 

“I reserve judgement,” Lorraine muttered, and picked up a notebook and flipped through it.

 

“I think he quite likes you,” Claudia offered weakly.

 

“I don’t want him to like me,” Lorraine said crossly, laying the notebook down again. “I want him to stay out of my way. And when I’ve finished sorting through this lot, I’m going to want him to cough up for some office supplies.”

 

“It might be easier if I did that,” Claudia said.

 

Lorraine briskly arranged the papers and notebooks into two neat piles. “Our room is about to become an office, just so you know. What were you planning on doing, getting him to cough up or coughing up yourself? Because I’m not prepared to let you take the financial burden for organising this... _mess_. Seriously, Claudia, why didn’t you get someone in before this? What are you going to do if you become accountable for something that happened on the fifteenth of March and you can’t find any of the relevant records because they don’t exist? You have nothing to give your version of events except your own word.”

 

Claudia threw her hands in the air. “I _told_ Sir James that. He didn’t anticipate this becoming serious or permanent or even his responsibility. At first, he didn’t want to listen to Cutter when he said that if there was one anomaly, there could easily be more, and then when it became clear we were going to need a permanent organisation he assumed he was only the interim leader. For the first three months we were working on the basis of just treating the symptoms, dealing with the emergencies. That’s how long it took the Minister to name Sir James as the official leader. After that, he agreed to start hiring and get the project on a more solid footing.”

 

 Lorraine sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I need a drink.”

 

“You and me both,” Claudia agreed fervently.

 

“But first...” Lorraine held out a large pile of papers and notebooks to Claudia, who accepted them with a sigh.

 

“Get this lot upstairs?”

 

“However did you guess?” Lorraine hefted her own pile. “And then we are going stationery shopping.”

 

They stepped out of the small room the papers had been kept in, and began to make their way back to their room, but were hampered by the flood of black-clad heavily-armed men heading purposefully to the door. Claudia dumped her papers on a side-table, and hauled someone out of the mass. “Adey! What’s happening?”

 

“There’s been a second attack, miss,” Adey said politely, after a quick glance at Lorraine. “Some lady out geocaching. A dog-walker found her. Captain Ryan’s looking for you.”

 

Claudia shot a look at Lorraine. “I’d better-“

 

Lorraine nodded quickly, and picked up Claudia’s mountain of papers, adding it to her own. “Go on. I’ll deal with this lot.”  

 

“See you later,” Claudia said, and hurried off in search of Captain Ryan.

 

“Will you be all right with that lot, miss?” Adey asked politely, but he was clearly eager to get away.

 

Lorraine smiled at him. “I’ll be fine.”

 

He smiled back, and headed away, as Claudia had. Lorraine waited for the flood of people to abate, Stephen and Abby bowling downstairs carrying tranquiliser rifles, and then walked up to her room, feeling strangely alone. The place was eerily quiet as she opened the door and stepped into the room she shared with Claudia, and Lorraine felt a shiver down her spine. She dropped the soon-to-be-coherent records on the desk and went round the room and en-suite’s windows and doors, checking the locks and doors. They all seemed solid enough, and the windows looked out onto the back lawn of the hotel, which contained a plain terrace, some fairly well-tended flowerbeds along the terrace to brighten the place up, and a number of optimistic tables and chairs for eating outdoors – none of which, in deference to the weather forecast, were set for lunch. Lorraine could see security lights, probably tripped by motion sensors, and the kids out kicking a football on the back lawn were keeping close to the hotel. She turned, glancing around the room; clean and pleasant, but unfussy.

 

Slightly reassured, she went back to the desk and cleared the complimentary pad of paper, pen and limited room service menu off the top. They seemed to have been left there out of habit, and Lorraine wondered how long the Mitchells had been playing host to this motley crew, and why. The suddenness of the call-out had precluded a decent briefing, and Claudia and Lester had mentioned very little by way of specifics.

 

Well. If there was anything she didn’t know about the anomaly project, she was probably about to find it out. Lorraine laid the stack of assorted paper on the desk, and eyed it for a moment before unpacking the pens and pencils she’d brought from her own home, and as an afterthought went downstairs and talked Jim Mitchell into ‘lending’ her a half-used pad of Post-It Notes. Back in her room, with the door locked, she flipped open her notebook and wrote a heading, which she double-underlined. The papers sat balefully before her, full of scrawled handwriting, paragraphs of technological jargon that veiled other things, much too horrible to contemplate.

 

She tapped the pad with her pen, lower lip caught between her teeth, breathing calm and controlled, as she remembered the conversation she had had with Claudia in her flat. _What about the Forest of Dean?... Something’s eating five-year-olds in it._ Claudia had only been briefly shocked, in the restaurant. What on earth had she seen that was worse?

 

It looked very much as if by leaving MI5 she had leapt from the frying pan into the fire.

 

With a sigh, Lorraine picked up a sheaf of papers off the top of the pile and began to sort them by date.

 

***

 

Claudia ended her call and slipped her phone into her coat pocket. She moved the few steps over to Lester, who was standing staring out into the middle distance of a bright sunny day. “Renée Beaufort,” she said, as evenly and dispassionately as he would expect her to. “Fifty-two. Recently and messily divorced, but she did well out of it. She works part-time for a charity and has no children.”

 

“Hm.” Lester pressed his lips together and looked as if this were an irritating diversion in his smooth, well-run day. Claudia wasn’t even sure why he was here. “Anyone likely to make a fuss?”

 

Claudia hesitated. “I think the ex-husband might. He’s standing as an MP somewhere in Hertfordshire.”

 

“Name?”  


“Frederic Cowell. Renée changed her name after the divorce.”

 

“Frederic Cowell,” Lester repeated, and his eyes narrowed. “Hmm. I don’t think he’ll be a problem.”

 

Claudia nodded, and decided she didn’t want to know what Lester planned on doing to Mr Cowell. “There was a reporter hanging around a few minutes ago, very junior, off a local newspaper. Lieutenant Lyle frightened him off.”

 

“I hope no heavy artillery was involved.” Something went squish on the ground, and Lester eyed his handmade brogues with apparent suspicion. “I wouldn’t put it past Lieutenant Lyle to bomb Stonehenge; peppering a cub reporter would be a victimless crime in comparison.”  


Claudia smiled as if she wasn’t sure whether that was a joke or not, which she wasn’t. She also wasn’t sure how Lester came to be so familiar with Lyle, since to her knowledge he’d only met the man once or twice. “I’m just going to check with Captain Ryan – see what they’ve found.”

 

She went over to the small knot of scientists by one of the further Jeeps, Captain Ryan in long-suffering attendance as usual. Connor looked as if he’d been sick, and Stephen looked distant. “Was there anything?” Claudia asked.

 

“It was the same creature,” Abby volunteered, face blank, and twisted the edge of her jacket in her fist. “Going by the tracks, I mean.” Her eyes came alive, and she glanced at Claudia. “Unless there’s another adolescent male big cat possibly a bit smaller than a puma about the place.”  


“Well, this _is_ the Forest of Dean, Abby,” Claudia said mildly, and was relieved to see Abby’s lips twitch as if she felt like smiling. “Stephen, did you find tracks?”

 

Stephen tilted his head, somewhere between nodding and shaking. “I found some, but the animal’s long gone. The dog-walker could have scared it off – I found _his_ tracks and by the look of things he had a bloody wolf, not a dog. The woman’s corpse was hardly touched in comparison to the kid’s; the animal was probably disturbed mid-meal.” His face hardened with self-disgust. “I lost the trail. It went onto a golf-course, there was a gap under the fence, and when we went round and had a look because none of us could get under the fence it walked straight across paving stones and fresh gravel and sodding vanished.”

 

“No-one saw anything?” Claudia asked, appalled.

 

Stephen shook his head, but said nothing more.

 

“Place was shut,” Ryan answered. “No-one at home. The nearest village is a couple of miles off – no good, without any trail.”

 

“Oh,” Claudia said, and drew several conclusions about their entrance to said closed golf-course, none of which she intended to follow up. 

 

“The one thing we _do_ know,” Stephen said, setting his jaw. “It was heading for the Forest of Dean proper.” He fished an Ordnance Survey map out of one of the capacious pockets of his jacket and spread it out on the bonnet of the Jeep. He stabbed at a spot on the map, marked by a pencil cross. _X marks the spot_ , Claudia thought. “This is the first attack, the day before yesterday. And this is the second attack. It’s moved south and west; not far, but I looked at the tracks and it’s favouring its left fore paw, which seems to be injured. It probably can’t move fast.”

 

“So how is it catching its victims?” Claudia said, puzzled. She tucked a thread of auburn hair behind her ear and looked up at Stephen. His eyes were fixed on the map, his lower lip caught between his teeth. Nick Cutter watched him carefully, as if anticipating an explosion. “If it’s injured?”

 

Stephen shrugged, not looking at her but at the map. “It must be able to manage short bursts of speed. Also, it gets really close to its victims, just because it’s not what they’re expecting. The woman was within twenty metres of it – the cops said she was a geocacher, she was concentrating on finding something else. The kid was even closer. They don’t _notice_ because they don’t _expect_ it.”

 

Claudia shivered. “Do you think it will kill again?”

 

Stephen nodded, folding up the map. “It’s killed twice and it’s partially eaten both its victims. It ignored the biltong inside the cache box and went for the woman instead, but it didn’t have time to eat much. I think it’s just found a new prey source.” He shot a look at Connor. “Are you going to be sick again?”  


“No,” Connor moaned, leaning his forehead against the cool metal of the Jeep. “But you’re not helping!”

 

Stephen’s lips quirked and he folded up the map, tucking it away into his pocket. Cutter relaxed imperceptibly. “Sorry, Con,” Stephen said. “Any ideas on what it is?”

 

“Well,” Connor said doubtfully, “if we’re going on the theory that it is something through an anomaly, then some kind of sabre-tooth, but that’s like trying to track down a droid by saying an imperial stormtrooper definitely stole it.”

 

There was a brief pause while everyone stared at Connor - Abby, Claudia and Ryan with total confusion and Stephen and Cutter as if they were trying to work out what he meant.

 

Connor blushed. “That made more sense inside my head, I swear. I meant like there are so many kinds of sabre-tooth we can’t tell which one it was just from the tracks.”

 

“ _Oh_ ,” Cutter said, with a look on his face that suggested light was dawning. “Oh, I see, lad. I’ve heard worse metaphors for it, actually.”

 

“Great,” Connor mumbled, looking depressed, and Abby told him not to worry about it, but Cutter had already switched his attention to Claudia and Captain Ryan.

 

“The name ‘sabre-toothed cat’ refers to one subfamily of Felidae and two subfamilies of Feliformia, and that’s not counting the two marsupial-like subfamilies,” he explained. Claudia digested this, sparing a moment to enjoy the politely wooden expression on Captain Ryan’s face that meant he hadn’t a bloody clue what was being said.

 

Stephen laughed, but he sounded tired, and Claudia noticed that Ryan’s wooden expression slipped and his eyes shot to Stephen. “I think we can rule out the marsupials, Cutter.” He ran a hand through his hair, making it stick up more than normal. “The problem is none of us have seen the bloody thing, and if there are eyewitnesses we haven’t been able to find them. All we know for sure is it’s a sabre-toothed cat of some description, it’s probably injured, and it’s smallish.”

 

 Claudia’s heart sank. She’d hoped that after two deaths they’d have more information than that, and what Abby had said earlier had seemed to encourage her. “But you said before – I thought you had a rough idea of age and sex.”

 

Stephen shrugged. “Presuming it’s like modern big cats, yes. _Presuming_. And the tracks are weird – not quite like a big cat’s. So I don’t really know what we’re dealing with.”

 

Claudia bit her tongue on several retorts, a number of which related to the sullen expression Stephen was currently sporting, which made him look considerably younger. She reminded herself how much Stephen took everything to heart, especially on occasions when he felt he’d failed in some way. He wasn’t sulking in order to look like an overgrown ten-year-old, but because he felt himself to be a failure.

 

A bitter gust of wind suddenly swept over the small group; Claudia shivered, Connor clapped a preventative hand on his hat, and Sir James Lester appeared from nowhere like a bad dream.

 

“Well?” he demanded.

 

“We lost the tracks,” Stephen almost snapped, face like thunder. Cutter started watching him carefully again.

 

Claudia shook her head. “We still have very limited information.”

 

“Why?” Lester demanded.

 

Claudia, seeing Stephen, Abby and Nick all straighten abruptly, going into fight mode, stepped hurriedly into the breach. “I understand the trail went cold on the local golf-course and there were no eyewitnesses beyond the dog-walker who initially found Renée’s body. There are also difficulties in identifying the specific kind of cat involved – did you know there are three different subfamilies under the description sabre-toothed cat?”

 

She could hear herself becoming hysterically desperate in the last sentence, and berated herself, especially when Nick muttered ‘Five, actually’ and she felt her heart rate spike. What she really needed here was Lorraine to keep Lester out of her hair, which Lorraine would be doing most effectively if Lester hadn’t insisted on coming along. _Bloody man_ , she thought, and extended that thought to Nick and Stephen.

 

“No, I can’t say I did,” Lester drawled, and then his voice sharpened and scaled up to an almost ear-splitting volume, “ _nor do I care_! Find this creature and _deal_ with it - I don’t care if it’s a mountain lion or a tabby cat, _just kill it_!”

 

“Rather easier said than done, Sir James,” Claudia said smoothly, taking one for the team in the sure knowledge that it would come back to bite her more quickly if she sided with Sir James than if she sided with the team. She couldn’t take Ryan being impassive and Nick and Abby being reproachful, not on a Sunday evening. “I’m glad to hear you view this as seriously as I do, and I was wondering if it was possibly time to involve the local police and put out a warning on local radio –“

 

Lester opened his mouth to deliver a tirade on the Official Secrets Act and the concept of a need-to-know basis, and Captain Ryan took the opportunity to hustle the team into the Jeep. Claudia decided that she preferred being abandoned to refereeing a fight between Stephen and Lester on the subject of transparency in government, and squashed a pang of despair. She pretended to listen patiently to Sir James, and tried to distract herself from the knowledge that she was unarmed, night was falling and there was a man-eating predator somewhere in the vicinity.


	6. Chapter 6

When Mary Mitchell knocked briskly on the door to Lorraine and Claudia’s room, Lorraine was wallowing in papers and Post-It Notes. “Come in!” she called, and tried to decide whether the fact that she couldn’t find any reports for July reflected a laxity in record-keeping, summer holidays or a lull in the anomalies.

 

Mary Mitchell opened the door, and halted in the doorway, eyeing the state of one of her rooms. Lorraine glanced up at her, realised the odd picture she must present, and smiled sheepishly at her. “I’m sorry – I ran out of room on the desk. I’m just trying to put this lot in order, find some kind of - of coherence.”

 

“Good luck,” Mary Mitchell said generously, still giving her the fish eye. Lorraine couldn’t blame Mary, seeing as she was kneeling on the floor, hemmed in by a semi-circle of paper in neat piles. She must look like some kind of madwoman.

 

“Thanks. I need it.”

 

With a visible effort, Mary tore her eyes away from the state of the floor. “I just came up to say that we’re dishing up supper in half an hour – shepherd’s pie and peas. Claudia said you weren’t vegetarian and didn’t have any allergies.”

 

“Claudia was absolutely right.” Lorraine stood up and removed her reading glasses, which she left on the bedside table she had colonised. Carefully, she stepped out of the semi-circle of paper. “Mrs Mitchell –“

 

“Mary-“

 

“Mary, then – where’s the best place to buy stationery around here?” Lorraine glanced meaningfully at the stacks of papers. “I need to, er... tidy up.”

 

Mary snorted. “I should say so. You’ll have to go into town; there’s a big WH Smith’s.”

 

“Hmm,” Lorraine said, and began to plot. Mary eyed her in a way that said she knew just what was going through her head, and Lorraine smiled blandly. “Can I help dish up, or anything?”  


“No, I think we’re sorted. Do you want a drink before supper?”

 

“Some sparkling water would be great,” Lorraine said gratefully.

 

“Of course.” They moved downstairs, and Lorraine spared a moment to notice how quiet the hotel was in comparison to when she’d first arrived. With half the lights off, it had the creepy ambience of somewhere that needed living in, that needed people to fill its darker corners. Lorraine shivered.

 

“It does get a bit cold in the evenings here still,” Mary observed.

 

“A little,” Lorraine agreed, and her eyebrows rose in interest as they were met on the stairs by a scowling boy, half-covered in mud and bearing a football.

 

“Mu-um, can’t we play till supper?”

 

“No,” Mary said firmly. “You know what we agreed about staying indoors after dark.”

 

The boy rolled his eyes with the confidence of a fourteen-year-old boy convinced he was indestructible. “ _Like_ we’re going to get eaten by the monster.”

 

“What monster?” Lorraine said absently, checking her phone (a text from her sister, relaying her niece’s latest bit of absurdity).

 

“Take your pick, we’ve had them all,” Mary said dryly. “Scutosauruses, gorgonopsids, packs of deinonychus...”

 

“No-o,” the boy said, and grinned in a frankly disturbing manner. “I mean the _monster_. The _giant tiger_ that Ben Trent says lives in the forest and is going to _eat us all up_.” 

 

Something about big cats and eating flicked a switch in Lorraine’s mind, and she tucked her phone away for later. She shared an expression of bland interest with Mary, and then with Mary’s son. “Is there more to the story, or is it just that?”

 

The kid shrugged. “Ben’s just a kid in Amy’s class; he always tells stories. This one is, like, years and years ago there was this private collection where this millionaire kept hundreds of animals, and one day a tiger escaped from the cages and ran away, and, like... ate people.” He pulled a face. “It’s probably just Ben making s- stuff up. It’s not like it was a dinosaur he was talking about. I might have believed him if he was talking about a _dinosaur_.”

 

“Probably,” Lorraine agreed.

 

Mary looked faintly disturbed, then rallied. “Peter, go and clean up. It’s almost dinner, and I am not having you at the dinner table in that state.”

 

Peter grumbled and wandered off. Mary turned to Lorraine. “You got something out of that, didn’t you?”

 

“Possibly,” Lorraine said, not bothering to obfuscate. “It might be nothing. It might be a useful clue. Do you know Ben Trent?”

 

“I think you should ask Abby about Ben Trent,” Mary said. “Apparently he was the reason all this... stuff first got official attention, or something like that.”

 

Lorraine raised a perfunctory eyebrow, and then continued to follow Mary downstairs.

 

 

Dinner was a strained affair. Sir James and Claudia arrived rather later than the anomaly team, Sir James hatchet-faced with anger and Claudia white about the lips. Stephen Hart and Nick Cutter appeared not to be speaking to anyone but each other, the soldiers turned into one large black-clad unapproachable morass, and Connor worked with his laptop over dinner. Lorraine reminded herself that commenting on colleagues’ manners was rude, tried to get a sentence out of Claudia and eventually left her to stew, and finally decided to address herself to Abby.

 

“Abby, is the name Ben Trent familiar at all?”

 

Such conversation as was taking place stopped. Abby laid down her fork. “Yeah, I... Well, I was working at Wellington Zoo. Still technically am, but, you know. Ben Trent wrote into the zoo, saying he thought he had some kind of undiscovered lizard for a pet, and they sent me along to check it out.” Abby paused, and shot Lester and Claudia an angry glance, for reasons Lorraine would have to winkle out of Claudia later. “It wasn’t a lizard. Not a modern-day one, anyway. It was a – Connor, what was the dinosaur Ben Trent found?”

 

“Coelurosauravus,” Connor said, spooning shepherd’s pie into his mouth with one hand and typing furiously with the other.

 

“That. Why?”

 

“Mrs Mitchell’s son Peter says that Ben Trent has been telling stories about a giant tiger he thinks lives in the forest and eats people.” Lorraine chased peas around her plate with her fork, suddenly aware that it wasn’t much to go on. “I thought it might be... relevant.”

 

“A fairly common child’s story, surely?” Lester drawled, but didn’t dismiss the idea entirely.

 

“An odd coincidence, though,” Lorraine observed. “For a story like that to be current at a time like this. I don’t know anything about geological eras – or dinosaurs, for that matter – but is it possible that the creature could have come from the anomaly near here some time ago and have moved away from the area, creating a local Beast of Bodmin Moor story as it went?”

 

Cutter shook his head. “Not from the specific anomaly here, the one that keeps re-opening. So far as we can tell that always opens into the Permian, and the Permian is well before any sabre-tooth species come along.”

 

“It would make sense, though,” Stephen Hart said. “If there was another anomaly present. And this area’s very active. We know that much.”

 

Lorraine restrained herself from observing that she didn’t know anything like that much.

 

“So if it came here some time before –” Claudia, pointing out the fly in the ointment – “why is it only attacking and killing humans now?”

 

“I can think of two reasons,” Stephen said, turning his attention to her. Lorraine noticed that, with something related to his own specific expertise to talk about, he became very much more animated, intense and obviously able. “Firstly, it’s possible that these are just the first kills we know about. It may be that the creature’s only taken those who had no-one looking out for them before, homeless people, missing persons, or that it hid its kills so successfully that the bodies weren’t found. Or it may be that the creature has only turned to man-eating recently. It’s often the case that man-eaters are injured, and become weakened so that they can’t hunt their usual prey, which is why they hunt humans instead.”

 

“Fascinating,” Lester said in a bored tone of voice. “Does this have any bearing on catching the animal?”

 

Stephen’s jaw tightened angrily, and Lorraine caught Claudia’s eye and prepared to leap into the breach, but Stephen answered without losing his temper or letting Nick Cutter lose it for him. “Possibly. There might be a trail of victims – the police might be aware of missing persons from years back who were never found, or unexplained animal sightings. Or, if it’s maneating inspired by an injury, it might make it easier to find.”

 

“And yet you missed it earlier today.”

 

Lorraine and Claudia flinched simultaneously. On a nearby table, just within earshot, Captain Ryan looked up and fixed his eyes on Stephen, who had gone very pale. The man Lorraine had identified as Claudia’s troublemaking Lieutenant Lyle shook his head and applied himself to his meal.

 

Nick Cutter exploded. “And where were you when we were trying to track the bloody animal? You wouldn’t know the difference between a tabby-cat out for a walk and a sodding tiger, so shut up, man!”

 

“ _Nick_ ,” Stephen muttered, shrinking in his chair. Connor gave him a wide-eyed, don’t-you-wish-we-were-anywhere-but-here look, and Stephen widened his eyes and bent his head to his plate in a manner that suggested hearty agreement.

 

“Cutter,” Lester barked.

 

“Everyone _calm down_ ,” Claudia said loudly, creating complete silence. She glowered at Lester and tightened her grip on Nick Cutter’s wrist, cheeks slightly pink. “This is getting _completely_ out of hand. Yes, Dr Hart-” she laid a delicate, tactful stress on his title – “did miss the creature today. However, that’s got less to do with a failure of knowledge and experience than it has poor conditions. We were _unlucky_ , that’s all.” She let go of Cutter’s wrist with a warning glare, and picked up her knife and fork again.

 

Lester sniffed, but said nothing, and Stephen shot Cutter a look that strongly suggested he had better keep quiet, too. The meal resumed in resentful silence, and Captain Ryan turned his attention back to the table he was sitting on.

 

Lorraine coughed quietly and asked Abby to pass the ketchup. Looking at Claudia, soft auburn hair falling down around her face and avoiding the eyes of both her boss and Nick Cutter, it seemed like it would be inadvisable to try to make conversation, so Lorraine merely tried to finish her meal as quickly as possible.

 

She wasn’t alone in this. Connor scarfed down the remainder of his food and then vanished without a word to anyone, which made Lester twitch. Stephen excused himself similarly quickly, although with a quiet word to Cutter and a nod to the rest of them as he left the table. Cutter followed, with a smile for Claudia (which she reciprocated) and a friendly comment to Abby and Lorraine, although he ignored Lester completely. Lorraine and Claudia shared a glance that said they had been left holding the baby _again_ , and prepared to sit out the rest of dinner with a very grumpy senior civil servant brooding over the table.

 

Finally, Lester got up and announced that he was going to order some coffee, and would the ladies like some.

 

“No thank you,” Lorraine said, without even thinking about it, “we’ll be fine,” and she and Claudia got up and fled, taking their plates over to the kitchen and hurrying back up the stairs to their room. It was as they were walking along the corridors to get there that Lorraine belatedly remembered that Claudia existed.

 

“I’m sorry – did you want coffee? We can go back and get some.”

 

“With Sir James lurking downstairs?” Claudia shuddered. “Not bloody likely. There’s a teapot and a kettle in the room, anyway.”

 

“Oh, yes.” Lorraine winced.

 

“ _Lorraine_ ,” Claudia said, on a warning note.

 

“I was just sorting the paperwork by date!”

 

“It’s all over the floor, is it?”

 

Lorraine nodded sheepishly. “We should find a proper office.”

 

“It’ll probably end up being in our room,” Claudia predicted gloomily. “The Mitchells haven’t got that much space and this place is full to bursting.”

 

Lorraine contemplated this invasion of her privacy and sighed. “Really?” she said, with more than a note of wistfulness in her voice.

 

Claudia nodded. “Really. Every time more people turn up there’s a shuffle-round. Mostly, I share with Abby and Cutter, Stephen and Connor share a room – I know, apparently a camp-bed’s involved, I haven’t dared to ask - and the soldiers sort themselves out, which is another thing I’ve never dared to ask about.”

 

Lorraine felt a certain amount of morbid interest. “So what’s happening now?”

 

“I’m sharing with you, obviously, Abby and Private Lacey have pitched a tent outside and will probably stay up all night-”

 

“Painting each other’s toenails?”

 

“-practising obscure Krav Maga moves on each other, Cutter, Stephen and Connor are still sharing a room, and Ryan’s stuck with Sir James.”

 

Lorraine winced in sympathy.

 

“I know,” Claudia said with exquisite gloom, rummaging in her pockets for the hotel room key and opening the door. “Just you wait until the workplace relationships get started and we have to worry about who’s shagging who. I had to rearrange all this, you know. Over the phone. In the back of the car.  With Sir James sitting in the front seat complaining.”

 

“Ouch!”

 

“Just you wait,” Claudia said, “I’ll delegate it to you one day... oh God _Lorraine_.”

 

“I know,” Lorraine said, eyeing the neatly arranged stacks of papers all over the floor and sighing. “I’ll move it. I think I’ve got it more or less in date order, anyway.”

 

“Not that I’m not impressed,” Claudia said wearily, “but-”

 

“I know, I know.” Lorraine raked a hand through her braids. “Go and have a bath. I’ll sort this out.”

 

Claudia looked at Lorraine. Lorraine realised that Claudia was just about biting her tongue on the words ‘you’d better’, reflected that after the day she’d obviously had this was showing great restraint and took it as a compliment.

 

Claudia sighed, picked up her weekend bag and disappeared into the bathroom. She only slammed the door a little bit, and Lorraine conceded that she probably deserved that.

 

 

“So,” Lorraine tried, forty-five minutes later when the papers had been neatly stacked to one side of the room where they were in no-one’s way but Lorraine’s and both women had taken soothing baths in what was left of the hotel’s hot water, “tell me, how was _your_ day?”

 

Claudia groaned, and let her head fall back against the headboard with a thump. “ _Awful_. Even the bits you didn’t see – especially the bits you didn’t see. Lester kept picking fights, and the thing is that if I want to preserve team unity, I have to let him pick those fights with me. And there are constant sources of tension: Lester keeps driving the team forward at a pace they can’t take, even though he knows how under-resourced we are, because he’s trying to protect the public safety. Of course, his career’s on the line, but...”  


“Like mine and yours.” Lorraine took a sip of tea and snuggled under the duvet provided. Claudia, who had evidently been brought up on freezing cold country house weekends and inhumane boarding schools, was lounging comfortably on top of the covers despite the fact that her nightwear consisted of a silky camisole and equally silky pair of shorts, neither of which could possibly provide any warmth at all.

 

“...Yes, and we manage not to be insufferable.” Claudia rubbed her forehead as if trying to relieve a headache. “Then, if you forget about Lester being deliberately abrasive, you have the automatic conflicts between him and Hart, who’s seriously concerned for the public welfare _and_ that of the animals, Cutter, who’s so pig-stubborn Captain Ryan had to thump him to get him back through his first anomaly, and Abby, who’s just really, really worried about the animals.”

 

“And still annoyed about Ben Trent?” Lorraine guessed.

 

Claudia nodded absently, and drank her tea as if she wished it was vodka.  “Ben Trent... He was a sweet boy, but he knew that the coelurosauravus wasn’t just a lizard, and he knew that there were other dangerous things – a gorgonopsid attacked him in his bedroom, he’s very lucky to be alive.”

 

“A what?”

 

“A kind of dinosaur. Except not, according to Nick.” Claudia sighed and ignored Lorraine’s slight smirk. “Cutter, I mean. Anyway, Abby had to lie and get him into a lot of trouble in order to keep this operation under wraps. She’s still pretty angry about that.”

 

“I hadn’t guessed.” Lorraine finished her tea, and set it aside on the bedside table. “What happens next?”

 

Claudia, who had been staring up at the ceiling, was startled. “What?”

 

Lorraine repeated her question.

 

“Oh.” Claudia blinked, sighed, and rearranged herself on the bed. “That would be another of those things we make up as we go along. There’s very little we can do-” the words ‘until someone else gets killed’ hung in the air – “but perhaps a visit to the local police, see if there are any records of calls about wild animals, missing persons who’ve never been found... That sort of thing.”

 

“Hmm.” Lorraine drew her knees up to her chest. “If you want help with that...”

 

“You’re good at intelligence analysis. I know.” Claudia frowned slightly and set aside her tea at last. “It depends what I can wring out of them. And then there’s...” She waved her hand at the stacks of papers.

 

“Yes, I know.” Lorraine sighed. “I need to get stationery. We need box files, for one thing. And paper. Lots of paper. And file dividers. Pens. That sort of thing. And I need to hunt people down...”

 

Both women came to an abrupt mental halt. Lorraine’s eyes dropped, and she continued, in a more stilted fashion.

 

“... and persuade them to fill in the gaps,” she finished lamely.

 

Claudia nodded and slid further under the covers, casting an unsubtle glance at the window and its drawn curtains. “Probably the best bet is Gloucester. I think it’s Gloucestershire Constabulary that covers the Forest of Dean, anyway.” 

 

“Mm,” Lorraine said vaguely.

 

“Bugger it,” Claudia said, after a long silence, reached over to her bedside table, and switched her lamp off. “I’m going to sleep. Good night, Lorraine.”

 

“Good night, Claudia,” Lorraine echoed, switched off her own light, and tried to fall asleep.

 

***

 

The corner of the town the homeless man chose to sleep in was quiet, clean, and contained relatively few residents who were likely to complain to the police about him. At this time of night, however, it was also very dark, and for some reason the orange street-lights suddenly felt very inadequate.

 

Silently, Sam climbed out of his battered sleeping bag and stood up, eyes sweeping the shadowed street. It was perfectly quiet: no-one at all out, no noise from the houses down the side-roads. Perfectly quiet, and perfectly still, a beautiful bright night with the stars out and the moon shining down, painting a thin silver gleam onto the roads and tossing shadows across the hushed town.

 

And yet. Sam shuddered and knelt down slowly, feeling for his torch without taking his eyes off the space around him. He’d been homeless long enough to hear trouble on the air, and he heard it now. The copper he knew, nice lad, local boy, had warned him the other week that some other local boys were making trouble in the centre of the town at night, drunk and high on the need to show off, and you look out for yourself, Sam. Well, Sam was looking out for himself now.

 

He found the torch, switched it on and flashed the beam around the street, looking for something. He would have heard boys sneaking up on him, but there was something there, something Sam didn’t understand: he might once have called it nothing and gone back to sleep, but not tonight. There was something in the air tonight, something old and wary.

 

Sam caught a flicker of something, a movement of a shadow underneath a 4x4 parked only a little way down the road, and adrenaline spiked in his system and his heart beat faster.

 

_Look out for yourself, Sam._

 

“Hey,” he called, and his voice rough with sleep broke the silence like a pane of glass falling. “Hey, who’s there?”

 

He was answered only with a growl.

 

“Come out,” he said, and tightened his grip on the heavy electrician’s torch. “I can see you. Stop messing around!”

 

He saw a flash of something bright green, green like cats’ eyes in the dark, and a noise came from the back of his throat, a noise he wasn’t familiar with – a cross between a sob and a whimper, an expression of pure fear. He thought he saw the – _thing_ creep closer, and felt his hands begin to shake. It was still in shadow, it refused to come into the glare of the torch, but he saw its movement, and he edged backwards.

 

The light in his hand, never very strong, began to die, and he remembered that among the things he had not had the money for over the past month had been new batteries. “ _Help_!” he screamed, “someone _help_!”, and he saw a sudden sharp movement from the creature in the darkness and screamed again.

 

His torch went out.

 

***

 

Abby woke abruptly at the sound of footsteps outside the tent, followed by rustling and quiet words. Groggily, she rolled onto her back and tried to make sense of what was happening; then whoever had come to speak to them went away, and Lacey crawled back in.

 

“Abby?” Lacey said quietly, prodding Abby. “Are you awake?”

 

Abby opened her eyes, and winced as the fabric of the tent completely failed to drown out the hotel’s lights. “Yeah. What’s happening?”

 

“We’ve got a lead.” Lacey flicked on a torch and set it down on the groundsheet so she could see to dress properly. “Some homeless guy was attacked, but he’s alive. Apparently he fought it off with a torch and enough people heard the screaming that someone came to find him, and it ran away.”

 

Abby woke up all the way, and started dressing herself. Lacey was already ready, but was waiting patiently for her. “Are we going out?”  


Lacey shrugged. “I don’t think so, but there’s a general meeting in the bar in two minutes.”

 

Abby sighed, pulled a coat on over her t-shirt, dragged her boots on without doing up the laces and disentangled herself from the tent, making for the hotel. All the lights had been turned on, and there were more armed soldiers standing guard than usual. Abby blinked, and turned to Lacey, who was shadowing her closely. “The attack, was it near here?”

 

“Nearer,” Lacey said evasively, and indicated without words that Abby should move into the hotel.

 

Abby started moving again. “Tomorrow night, I don’t care if I have to sleep on the floor, I’m sleeping inside.”  


“We’re safe out here,” Lacey said. “With the lights and people on guard. If anything happened we’d be the first to know. And I’ve got my rifle.”

 

“What rifle?” Abby said, pushing the door open and hustling inside. Her coat was all very well, but the t-shirt under it was very thin and the night wasn’t warm.

 

“The one beside my sleeping bag,” Lacey said.

 

“Oh.” Abby grinned. “All right, then.”

 

Lacey matched her grin, and then they were inside the bar, and Lester was somehow managing to look like an irritable grand vizier with no tie, an untucked shirt and odd socks. Cutter and Connor looked much like they normally did, Stephen looked as if he’d just rolled out of bed to answer the door and invite you to join him, Claudia looked mildly harassed and the new woman looked in need of caffeine, which more or less covered all the possible reactions to the situation. Abby sympathised, and took a seat and a mug of coffee.

 

“Now that we’re all here,” Lester said grimly, giving Abby a pointed stare. Abby carefully didn’t mention that she was the only one sleeping outside.

 

“Essentially,” Claudia said, leaping into the conversational breach as usual, “there’s been another attack and the man in question survived, but the creature wasn’t caught. The policeman who came to the scene knew the anomaly project existed, so he called here half an hour ago.”

 

“Did anyone try to track it?” Stephen asked; he had his head tilted and a slight, listening frown on his face.

 

“The creature or the policeman?” Lester enquired, examining his manicured fingernails.

 

Stephen gave him a brief, flickering look of disdain. “The creature.”

 

Claudia nodded. “Some of the policemen tried, but they didn’t get very far.”

 

“Probably only confused the trail,” Stephen muttered, and took a long draught of coffee.

 

“Is there anything that can be done immediately?” Cutter wanted to know, rubbing the back of his head with his hand as if trying to impress wakefulness on it and only making himself look more surprised than usual. “Because if not I think we should probably all go back to bed.”

 

Lester raised his eyebrows, but didn’t disagree. Connor let out a sigh of relief that wasn’t quite as inaudible as he might necessarily have liked it to be, and Abby put a hand up to her face to cover her smirk.

 

Claudia rolled her eyes at all of them. “No, not at three o’clock. We’ll have to deal with it in the morning; we can’t follow the animal through a residential area or interview a survivor in hospital at night. But everyone should be aware... this attack was much closer to here. Be careful. Especially you, Abby, Private Lacey, we’ve _got_ to find somewhere for you to sleep that isn’t outside.”

 

 Abby cleared her throat, and shifted on the table she was sitting on. “I was thinking that myself.”

 

“Great minds,” Claudia said shortly, and clasped her hands together like a teacher who’s run out of things to say and doesn’t want to show it. “We’ll need to work out exactly what we’re doing in the morning, but Nick, I’ll want you to be ready to talk to the survivor – his name’s Sam Redford – and please be _tactful_. Stephen, you’ll be-”

 

“Tracking,” Stephen said, and nodded.

 

“Right.” Claudia ran her hands through her loose hair and swept a harried glance over them all. “I think that’s everything. Unless – Sir James?”

 

            Lester shook his head. “I have nothing in particular to add.”

 

            “Makes a change,” Lieutenant Lyle stage-whispered behind Abby.

 

            Lester raised a quelling eyebrow. “But do exercise caution, Miss Maitland, Private Lacey – if you took it upon yourselves to be eaten, the paperwork would be... tedious.”

 

            “Could you _not_ talk like that about my team members?” Cutter said, in tones of indignation.

 

            Abby was quite pleased that he’d stood up for her, but saw the looks of dread Claudia and Miss Wickes exchanged and sympathised.

 

            “In your case, Professor,” Lester said silkily, “it would be a positive _joy_.”

 

            Stephen clapped a preventative hand over Cutter’s mouth, and Claudia told both Lester and Cutter to stop it, an instruction that met with approval from everyone but the two men it was aimed at.

 

            Abby twisted her head to look at Lacey. “Sod this. I’m going to bed.”

 

            Lacey nodded, and peeled silently away from the wall and followed her back to the tent. One of the sentries looked back over his shoulder as they came out of the hotel and nodded to them, and Lacey went over to have a word – by which, Abby reflected, she meant a gossip – with him. Abby herself crawled into the tent, and began to undress.

 

            “I’m tired,” she yawned when Lacey came in; a broken night’s sleep and the long, depressing hours tramping around after the creature were already taking their toll. “And I hate this case.”

 

“Me too,” Lacey admitted, and slid back into her sleeping bag with most of her clothes still on. “God. Did you see that kid’s body?”

 

Abby nodded wordlessly.

 

“Sick,” Lacey said conclusively, and checked over her rifle quickly before laying it down again.

 

Abby shut her eyes, feeling much better for the presence of weaponry, and burrowed down into her sleeping bag in order to cut out the light from outside. “Let’s just hope Stephen finds the bloody animal tomorrow.”


	7. Chapter 7

 

“- and you’re sure he won’t give you any other time for an appointment?” Claudia said despairingly, staring woefully at Lorraine over her third cup of coffee.

 

Lorraine (who really was adapting much better than Claudia had any right to expect) shook her head, and finished off her muesli. “No. It’s half-past eleven today or nothing until next week.”

 

Claudia groaned, and drained her coffee. “This is Gloucestershire Constabulary we’re talking about. He can’t be _that_ busy.”

 

“He _is_ the Chief Constable,” Lorraine pointed out mildly, peeling a banana. They were eating breakfast in a corner of the bar, surrounded by the notes Lorraine had made while on the phone to the Chief Constable’s personal assistant.

 

“Ugh. Bagsy I don’t have to explain it to Lester.” Claudia stacked her plate with Lorraine’s bowl and their mugs.

 

“That’s fine,” Lorraine said equably. “So long as you take me to Gloucester when you go to Quedgeley to talk to the Chief Constable. Mary says I’m most likely to find what I need there. And what are you going to do about the survivor from last night? Weren’t you planning to talk to him this morning, before he’s discharged from hospital?”

 

Claudia laid her stack of crockery down for the express purpose of thumping her head on the bar. “ _Bugger_! I’d almost forgotten about that.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “We’re not short on vehicles, at least. If the team split up... Stephen has to do the tracking, that’s easy enough... Cutter should probably interview the survivor, he’s got more authority than Connor but he’s just as likely to be able to work out exactly what this thing is from a description...”

 

Lorraine picked up the abandoned crockery, tucked her notebook and mobile under her arm, and took the crockery through to the kitchen. “But what if he puts his foot in it and says something tactless?”

 

“Good point,” Claudia said, thinking furiously. “He’s usually quite good with members of the public, though. When he isn’t being an obstructive, infuriating swine, he can be quite charming.”

 

Lorraine gave her a small, sideways smile that made Claudia blush. “So you quite like him, then.”

 

Claudia pressed her lips together. “He has his moments,” she admitted, wishing the blush would go away. “Anyway. If I send Abby with him, she should be able to keep him under control. And Connor...”

 

Claudia looked at Lorraine, in the hope that her colleague would do as she’d done a hundred times for Ian Mackie and produce a magical solution from somewhere in her Blackberry. Lorraine looked back at her.

 

Claudia sighed. “I don’t know what I’ll do with Connor.”

 

“I’ll take him,” Stephen volunteered, looming from nowhere and making Claudia start and shriek.

 

“Don’t do that!” Claudia hissed, and followed it up with: “But won’t he get in your way, if you’re tracking?”

 

One of Stephen’s eyebrows flickered infinitesimally. “He’s got his database, he might be able to work out what it is if we get a proper sighting of it. And he’s pretty observant, now I’ve told him what to look for. Can I have Captain Ryan?”

 

“What for?” Claudia queried, unable to resist the obvious opening, and had the satisfaction of seeing someone else start and turn pink about the edges.

 

“You mean as back-up?” Lorraine enquired, treading on the back of Claudia’s foot. She’d obviously taken a liking to Stephen. Claudia turned to remonstrate with her, and saw her produce a sheet of paper from nowhere. “Not today, I’m afraid. He’s on duty at the recurring anomaly. Lieutenant Lyle and his team are free.”

 

Stephen relaxed slightly, and nodded. “I can work with Lyle.”

 

“Is that a _duty roster_?” Claudia squeaked, eyeing the paper, on which were neat handwritten columns of names. “Where did you get that? You didn’t have it last night!”

 

Lorraine gave her a baffled look. “Captain Ryan had one worked out roughly. I just asked him for it so as to have some kind of a record.”

 

“Before breakfast,” Stephen corroborated, and offered Lorraine a small smile. “That was cruel, Miss Wickes.”

 

“But necessary.” Lorraine returned the smile, and Claudia balanced on the delicate edge between pleasure that her friend was settling in so easily, and extreme irritation that she was settling in so easily when Claudia regularly found it difficult to cajole the team into co-operation. 

 

 “So if you go with Connor and Lieutenant Lyle and whoever else you need,” Claudia said, recovering control of the conversation, “and Abby and Nick go to talk to what’s-his-name, Sam something, and I go with Lester to Quedgeley-“ she pointed at Lorraine “-taking you to Gloucester on the way... All right, so, we need two drivers.” She breathed a sigh of relief. “That makes sense. Good. Lorraine, will you go and tell Lester? Stephen, go and find Connor. And I’ll go and dig out Nick. Right.”

 

***

 

“I don’t know why Claudia thinks we need a driver,” Nick complained as Private Lacey waited for a free space at a roundabout.

 

Abby shared a Look with Private Lacey, one of many that had been flying between the front seats of the car since they’d left the hotel. Nick caught said look and leant forward.

 

“I mean, we can find a hospital by ourselves.”

 

“Yes, Cutter,” Abby said in a unconvincing, bored monotone. “Of course, Cutter.”

 

Nick leant back again, slightly offended. “No need to talk like that.”

 

“Just so long as you don’t upset Mr Redford,” Abby said, without turning around. Nick grimaced at the back of her head. “Claudia told me I had to keep you in hand.”

 

Nick gasped and laughed. “Of all the-! Why is Private Lacey here, then?”

 

“To keep me in hand,” Abby said as they whizzed decorously around the roundabout, and Private Lacey smirked, signalling left and pulling off onto the road for the hospital. “I don’t think Claudia trusts my driving.”

 

“Sensible woman.”

 

“Oi!” Abby twisted in her seat and grinned at him, and Lacey pulled in to the car park at Cheltenham General Hospital and found a parking place.

 

“Right,” Nick said, jumping out of the car before Lacey had quite finished parking. “Let’s go and find this Sam Redford.”

 

Abby and Lacey followed him into the main reception, Lacey staying one carefully-measured pace behind him and Abby and wearing the minimum of weaponry and the soldiers’ patented look of bland professionalism. The receptionist still looked shocked when she saw them approaching, and Nick gave her his most people-friendly smile.

 

“Excuse me. We’re here to see a Mr Sam Redford about the assault he suffered last night? I think you’re expecting us.”

 

The receptionist, who was evidently not expecting them, typed something into a computer, looked at it, glanced at him for a moment and then apparently decided to pass the buck. “You’ll have to speak to the nurses on the ward, I can’t vouch for his condition.”

 

“That’s all right. Where is he exactly?”

 

The receptionist pulled a leaflet from a selection on the counter and scribbled a ring and a wavering dotted line on a small map, then flipped the leaflet so that Nick could see and gave him a variety of detailed and confusing instructions that he had no intention of remembering. For one thing, he couldn’t understand them. He smiled and thanked her anyway, accepted the leaflet, and headed purposefully for the lifts as a matter of principle.

 

Standing in the lift, cramped in awkwardly with a teenaged boy and his younger sister, Nick passed the map to Abby. “Any idea what that means?”

 

Abby scrutinised it for a moment, and then gave him an Are You Stupid look. “It means we should have got out two floors ago.” The lift binged to a stop, and the siblings shuffled out; Abby punched the button for the correct floor, and passed the map back to Nick.

 

Eventually, thanks largely to Abby’s superior map-reading skills, they reached the correct ward and were allowed in. Sam Redford was in a corner bed, close to a window, and the bay was largely empty; the only other person there was fast asleep.

 

Redford himself looked thin, aged by his time on the streets even though he could only have been about thirty, and tired, but essentially healthy. His reaction to their approach was wary, especially when he caught sight of Lacey, but not panicked. Nick could see bandages on his shoulders and arms, but the hospital sheets hid any other damage. He pulled up a chair for Abby and himself, suggested quietly to Lacey that she go and get herself a coffee, and smiled at the patient. “Good morning, Mr Redford. My name’s Professor Cutter, and this is my colleague, Miss Maitland. We’d like to ask you some... ah... questions, about the assault you suffered last night.”

 

“I was told you’d be along,” Redford said.

 

“That’s good. Surprise visitors are all very well, but not when they come from the government.” Nick kept his tone light, and was pleased to see that the man cracked a smile.

 

“You don’t look much like the government.”

 

Nick shot a glance at Abby, who was wearing jeans, pink Doc Martens, and a leather jacket, and then considered himself, dressed in his old green jacket and a pair of chinos. “No, I suppose we don’t. We’re a very... specialised branch, Mr Redford.”

 

Redford raised his eyebrows. “Spooks?”  


“Not that specialised.” Nick cleared his throat, and wished he had Claudia here to ask the right questions and avoid queries about their state of dress and exact job descriptions. “Why don’t you tell us what happened last night, Mr Redford. In your own words.”

 

“It was all... weird,” Redford said slowly. “I was trying to get some sleep – and then there was... something in the air, I don’t know, maybe I heard something, and I knew something was out there. I thought it might be kids or whatever. So I got up and switched on my torch and had a look round, and there was... like, a shadow under a car, and I called out, and it growled. And it kept coming closer.  My torch started dying and I saw it get really close, and I started yelling for help, like.” He shrugged, and then winced; it was obviously painful. “Then my torch went out and it just jumped on me, knocked me right over, and I kept yelling and thumping it with my torch, and some people came, the people who lived in the street, and when it saw lights it broke and ran.”

 

“Hmm. Can you describe it to us?”

 

Redford thought hard. “It was... like a big cat, but not as, sort of, sleek. Chunkier bones and bigger teeth! Except it was skinny as hell. Looked manky, to be honest with you, not healthy at all. Smelt like blood and rot, as well. It was... small-ish.” He waved a hand in the air uselessly, as if trying to indicate size. “I mean, not the size of just a moggy, but not tiger-sized either. Not, like... if you heard about a loose big cat on the news, you’d expect it to be bigger.” He was silent for a moment, and Abby leant forward as if she was going to intervene. Then he glanced back up at Nick and said: “It was strong. I was hitting it over and over again with the torch – and it’s heavy, it’s an old electrician’s torch from before I lost my job – and it hardly even noticed except when I thumped it once. Sort of... on the left, I think, on the shoulder, and it reared back, and that’s when all the people really came out and it backed off.”

 

“I see,” Nick said, mind working furiously. Stephen’s hypotheses about the creature seemed to have been largely confirmed: it was smallish and unhealthy, possibly, going by what Redford had said about weak spots, with an old vulnerable injury. “Did you see where it went?”

 

Redford shrugged again, and winced, a hand going to his shoulder. “I wasn’t looking. It ran off. Just vanished.”

 

“A good thing for you that it did,” Nick observed. “You’re an observant man, Mr Redford.”

 

“Being homeless doesn’t encourage not paying attention.”  


Nick grimaced, and felt like an enormous twerp. “Of course. Sorry. Have you got somewhere to go after they discharge you?”  


“A homeless shelter’s offered me a space. Because of these.” Redford indicated his bandages. “Means I’m classified as needing help more than before. If I could just get a job...” He shook his head definitively, and then looked at Cutter and Abby. “Have you got any more questions? Because I’m tired.”

 

Nick glanced at Abby, and when she shook her head slightly, said “No.” He stood, and shook hands formally with Redford. “Thank you for your time, Mr Redford.”

 

“Well, that was illuminating,” he said to Abby as they left the ward, meaning the exact opposite.

 

Abby shrugged. “It’s useful to have confirmation.”

 

“Stephen will be pleased about that,” Nick acknowledged, and decided it was probably worth it just because Stephen would be glad to know his theories were correct. He’d been upset and furious with himself after losing the creature’s trail, and Lester hadn’t made it any better, the bastard – but Stephen couldn’t follow thin air, and that gravel and long stretch of paving stone with no indication as to where the animal had moved onto amounted to the same thing.  


Nick had a sudden thought, and stopped in his tracks. “Where on earth did we leave Lacey?”

 

***

 

Stephen ducked under the police cordon, followed by Connor, and surveyed the scene of the crime with a curled lip that spoke volumes about his opinion on police officers and the trail they had evidently ruined.

 

“Well,” Connor said, giving a belligerent-looking policeman a nervous glance, “here we are.”

 

“I can see that, Conn.” Stephen completely ignored the few police officers still guarding the scene, and headed straight for the doorway Sam Redford had evidently been sleeping in. There were still traces of blood on the pavement, but it was dried, and it wasn’t as if they could send prehistoric creature blood off to the lab and expect them to be able to say exactly which creature it was. What lab would you send it to, anyway?

 

There were no marks visible on the pavement or the tarmac of the road to indicate where the creature had gone, and Stephen straightened up and headed straight for Lyle, who was having a quiet but firm discussion with the head cop. This finished just as he arrived – by the look on the policeman’s face, it had not gone pleasantly for the representatives of Gloucestershire Constabulary – and both men turned to him.

 

“This is Dr Hart,” Lyle said to the police sergeant. “Like I mentioned, he’s an expert in feral animal behaviour.”

 

Stephen nodded cursorily. “Did any of the witnesses say which way the animal might have gone?”

 

“One of ’em said it went down there,” the police sergeant said, pointing out an alleyway. “She didn’t feel like following it, apparently, I can’t say I blame her.”

 

“Thanks,” Stephen said, and walked over to the alleyway. Lyle and Connor followed him.

 

“Think we’ll actually find it?” Lyle muttered.

 

“Here? I doubt it. It’s had hours to go to ground and there will have been people all over the trail.” Stephen peered down the alley, which was essentially a spare bit of ground between two houses where the bins went, and which gave out onto a common.

 

Lyle grunted. “I’ll go and get Kermit.”

 

“We probably aren’t going to find it,” Stephen reiterated, walking slowly down the alleyway; he almost heard Connor deciding that the better part of valour was discretion and staying with Lyle. Again, the tarmac provided no clues whatsoever, but Stephen had hopes of the common. Just so long as the bloody animal hadn’t stayed on the paths. He came out of the alleyway and surveyed the path  that ran behind the houses: also tarmac, with a low rail between the path and the common.

 

“Hart!” Lyle yelled, and Stephen ignored him. “Bugger. Temple, go and get Kermit _now_.”

 

Stephen heard running behind him, and Lyle caught up with him in moments. “You’re nearly as bad as the bloody professor,” Lyle complained, scowling down at Stephen as he crouched to check out what might have been a pugmark, but wasn’t. “God knows what the boss sees in you.”

 

Stephen, totally confused, shot Lyle a surprised look. “What the hell are you talking about?”

 

Lyle looked rather surprised himself. “You don’t...?” The surprise on his face turned to an evil grin. “Forget I said anything.”

 

“Huh,” Stephen muttered, and went back to scrutinising the edge of the common, looking for the place where the creature had left the path. Logically it should be close to the mouth of the alleyway, but Stephen had been thwarted with solid paving far too often when tracking this creature, and had dark suspicions that it might be messing with him. Of course, that was anthropomorphising an animal that hadn’t done very much to deserve it, but Stephen wasn’t feeling rational.

 

Connor and Kermit clattered to a stop behind them just as Stephen caught sight of a pugmark and stepped over the rail to get a better look. Lyle moved to join him.

 

“Don’t even _think_ about it,” Stephen said through gritted teeth, and Lyle clearly had a fit of common sense and stayed where he was. Stephen knelt, fingers hovering over the pugmark, and swept the ground slowly with his eyes. Yes. Another. The animal had been moving at speed, the marks were scuffed, there was no guarantee that the local dogwalkers and cyclists hadn’t trampled all over the bloody trail, but still – he moved forward, and yes: that was a third – he had a _trail_. An actual, honest-to-God _trail_.

 

Stephen smiled. It was possible he looked slightly mad. Connor certainly seemed concerned.

 

“Follow me,” he said, glancing back at the others. “At a distance. And keep off the trail.”


	8. Chapter 8

“I do hope Miss Wickes doesn’t intend to go on a spending spree,” Lester observed, taking up most of the back seat with his copy of the _Times_ , and cast a warning look at Claudia.

 

Claudia, who was sitting in the front seat, merely sighed slightly and said: “She’s very careful, Sir James, she won’t get anything that isn’t necessary. And you did ask her to regularise the paperwork. That’s what she’s there for.”

 

Lester snorted. His private opinion was that Lorraine Wickes had been the best of the candidates on offer, and that she was integrating nicely with the team, but that she was also developing the team’s undesirable uppity attitude to higher authority. Recalling that Claudia Brown viewed Lorraine as an ally, he decided not to mention this.

 

Claudia shifted slightly in the seat in front of him, and the soldier driving – Fiver, Lester suspected; he had a good head for names, even though the only members of the SF contingent he had more than a passing acquaintance with were Captain Ryan and the incorrigible Lieutenant Lyle – brought the car to a smooth halt outside the police headquarters at Quedgeley. Lester laid the paper aside, and waited for Claudia to finish her instructions to Fiver before climbing out and allowing her to precede him into the building.

 

As a small boy, Lester had often wanted to have minions, and there was certainly something very satisfying about the way Claudia hurried ahead and spoke quickly to the disapproving policewoman waiting for them. He strolled up to the pair, and raised a querying eyebrow.

 

“The Chief Constable’s waiting for you, sir,” the policewoman said, “and he says Miss Brown’s to have full access to the archives.”  


“If you’d be so kind,” Lester said, managing to convey boredom and laziness in one carefully crafted tone. Claudia winced.

 

 

The interview with the Chief Constable was brief and disagreeable. The man was tall, twitching with annoyance and anxiety, aware that something beyond his official ken was taking place and very much irritated by this circumstance. He had had a run-in with the inestimable Miss Brown before, and didn’t want another one; for a minor civil servant she was surprisingly good at getting her way. Lester’s name had evidently been mentioned in dark and menacing tones on that occasion; there was no other explanation for the simultaneously wary and pugnacious regard that Lester was treated to as he was shown into the office.

 

“Chief Constable,” he said, with an amiable nod of greeting and a firm handshake, and took a seat.

 

The Chief Constable sat down. “Sir James,” he said, looking as if just saying Lester’s name had been like biting into a lemon.

 

“Sorry for troubling you at such short notice,” Lester lied smoothly, and proceeded to explain to the Chief Constable firstly, that there was a serious threat to the public at large that Lester couldn’t describe to him, secondly, that said threat to the public at large had been ongoing for the past eight years at least (Lester mentioned the words _Helen Cutter_ and watched the Chief Constable flinch), thirdly, that a confidential government task force had been set up to deal with the threat since the police were obviously unable to, and fourthly that the minister would take it very much amiss if the government task force were to experience any trifling inconveniences, like arrests.

 

The Chief Constable blinked, sorted through all of this in his mind, and made the cardinal error of asking which minister Lester referred to.

 

Lester merely raised a frosty eyebrow, which effectively silenced the man, and persisted. “I am in the happy position of being able to credit some of your policemen with a brisk and professional response to the threat on the ground-“

 

“I’m pleased to hear it,” the Chief Constable muttered, sounding anything but.

 

“-and I’m sure they will be able to render equally important assistance in the immediate emergency,” Lester continued, causing a further souring of the expression on the Chief Constable’s face. Lester felt a slight breeze from the open office window, and briefly considered a remark on the subject of the wind changing and faces staying as they were, but dismissed the idea on the grounds that he actually wanted to achieve something here. “We naturally have our own forces at our disposal, but they are sadly few in number - cuts, you know, I’m sure we can all support the cause of saving money on our taxes - and lack your men’s expertise in maintaining public order.”

 

“What’s the immediate emergency?” the Chief Constable demanded, rallying unexpectedly and looking impressively hard-nosed in the circumstances.

 

“Oh, a dangerous wild animal,” Lester said carelessly.

 

The Chief Constable inhaled a large amount of the glass of water he’d just taken a sip from, set the glass down on the desk with a crash, and bellowed, “Lester, if you’ve barged in here to tell me you want my men to help round up – oh, I don’t know, some _fairytale_ of an escaped tiger-!”

 

“My civilian experts inform me that it’s roughly puma-sized,” Lester said, casually seizing on Stephen Hart’s conjectures as truth in this emergency, “and naturally we’d prefer to limit your department’s involvement. It’s all covered by the Official Secrets Act, and we don’t want to tie up your policemen signing bits of paper, now do we?”

 

The Chief Constable automatically grumbled about the state of modern policing, and then caught up with what Lester had said. “ _Puma-sized_?”

 

“More or less,” Lester said, with exquisite boredom.

 

“There’s a – _a puma-sized animal_ haunting the south-west of England?”  The Chief Constable appeared to have passed from fury into disbelief. “Lester, this is bloody _nonsense_. You expect me to believe this?”

 

“No,” Lester said. “It would be convenient if you didn’t, in fact. But I do expect that the expertise of the Gloucestershire Constabulary will be at the project’s disposal, as and when we require it.”

 

The Chief Constable passed rapidly back into fury.

 

Lester cut him off. “ _No_ , Chief Constable; this really is not the moment. We would require their assistance in matters of public order. We, after all, don’t have the authority to put up police cordons and such. It’s a matter of keeping the public safe, and you don’t have any choice in it.” Lester examined his fingernails minutely. “Of course, if you wish, I _can_ speak to the Home Secretary for confirmation...”

 

“I think that would be wise,” the Chief Constable said through gritted teeth, eyeing Lester as if he wanted to feed him to the dangerous puma-sized wild animal.

 

Lester removed his phone from his pocket, and ostentatiously selected a number from the address book.

 

 

A few minutes later, the Chief Constable – beetroot with irritation but otherwise composed – escorted Lester to the reception, with a very reluctant apology for his unhelpfulness.

 

Lester brandished a gracious hand. “Not at all. In your place, I would have been equally obstinate.” He beamed at the Chief Constable, whose eyes had narrowed angrily. “I imagine someone’s prised Miss Brown away from the archives?”

 

“Here, sir,” Miss Brown said, appearing from the other direction with a sheaf of photocopies stuffed into her handbag and chased by a policewoman, who looked marginally more pleased to be getting rid of her than the Chief Constable was to be getting rid of Lester. Lester assumed that Miss Brown’s sparkling personality hadn’t had the same mellowing impact on the bureaucrats of the Gloucestershire Constabulary that it had on Nick Cutter, an assumption that was confirmed by Miss Brown’s ostentatious thanks to the policewoman.

 

“Come along, Miss Brown, we wouldn’t want to overstay our welcome,” Lester said breezily, thanked the Chief Constable again just to see him twitch, and swept outside, where Fiver (or was it Fizz?) was waiting in the car. He climbed into the back seat, and addressed himself to the _Times_ again.

 

“I’ve had a call from Miss Wickes, miss,” Fiver said to Miss Brown, drawing the car smoothly out of the parking space it had been idling in and swinging out of the car park. “She says she’s finished with her shopping and is waiting at the point you agreed on, by Gloucester Cathedral.”

 

“Good,” Miss Brown said. “Swing by and pick her up, please... If that’s all right, Sir James?”  


“Oh, yes,” Lester said distantly, reading an article about the ascent of a populist politician to the presidency of a minor Asian country, and putting together several mental jigsaw pieces completely unrelated to the anomaly project. As with today’s encounter with the Chief Constable, it didn’t pay to get rusty in his job; you never knew what you might be doing next.

 

***

 

“Bugger,” Stephen said decisively, eyeing the closed garden gate before them.

 

“Uh-oh,” Connor said pre-emptively, hoisting the rucksack carrying his laptop higher on his shoulders and glancing at both Lyle and Kermit. Kermit wasn’t looking at the wooden fence and corresponding wooden gate, or the rubbish bins that stood just to one side of it, but examining the surrounding area for incidental murderous sabre-toothed tigers. Lyle, however, looked thoughtful. And mischievous.

 

Connor gulped for added effect, well aware that neither that nor his previous indication of discomfort would stop either Lyle or Stephen going through that gate.

 

“Cut it out, Conn, I _know_ the animal went through here,” Stephen said peremptorily, prowling the area around the bins and fence as if it would provide an alternative. “Look-“ he pointed at some pugmarks which (if you asked Connor) were glorified scuffmarks, scratches on the top of one of the plastic bins, and some tears clearly visible in the roofing felt of the shed on the other side of the fence. “It jumped onto the bins and from there onto the shed, but where did it go then? Either into the garden or over the fence. And, let’s face it –“ he indicated a large, flourishing rosebush in the next garden along, which had grown over the fence and presumably trailed into the garden they were facing – “over the fence isn’t that likely.”

 

“Kermit, go round the front and see if there’s a car parked in front,” Lyle said, and then added before Kermit could leave, “no- Temple, you go, and ring the doorbell as well.”

 

Connor almost dropped his rucksack. “Who, me? But what if there’s someone in or something?”

 

“That’s why you’re going,” Lyle said, showing no signs of appreciation for Connor’s predicament. “Just tell ’em you’re looking for someone, or you’re a door to door salesman, or... a Jehovah’s Witness.”

 

Connor stared at Lyle. Stephen also stared at Lyle, one eyebrow raised quizzically, seemingly shocked out of his patented tracking trance by the sheer improbability of Lyle’s suggestion.

 

“Not a Jehovah’s Witness,” Lyle conceded after a moment.

 

“ _Thank_ you,” Connor said indignantly.

 

“Off you go, then!” Lyle said cheerfully.

 

Connor made helpless noises for a moment, spluttered a little in protest, and then haplessly wandered round to the front of the house, followed by Kermit, who stayed prudently out of sight while Connor went for the doorbell.

 

The house was smallish, built out of dirty yellow bricks, double-glazing and unlovely plastic, and clearly one of a job lot, like all the others on the road. The small paved drive, taking the place of a front garden, was empty; neither the separate low wrought-iron gate into the garden nor the frosted glass and plastic door gave clues as to whether anyone was inside or not. Connor cast his eyes heavenwards, prayed frantically that he wouldn’t make more of a fool of himself than necessary in the next few minutes, and pressed the doorbell. It played the Imperial March, which gave him a satisfying moment of geek recognition, but no-one answered it. He waited a moment, then pressed again.

 

Still, no-one answered. He craned his neck to look round to where Kermit was waiting just on the corner; Kermit raised his eyebrows questioningly. Connor shrugged, and did his best to look completely bemused. To be fair, since he’d joined the anomaly project, that was getting easier and easier.

 

Kermit jerked his head in the direction of the others, still by the fence, and Connor came to join him, going back round to meet the others.

 

“Nobody’s answering the doorbell,” he said dubiously, “and there’s no car. But I don’t think...”

 

Lyle tested the wooden gate absently. “Bolted.”

 

“Breaking and entering, really, is this a good idea?”

 

“Shut up, Temple,” Lyle said.

 

Stephen squinted and put his head on one side, sizing the fence up. “No, Conn. It’s terrible. If you boost me...”

 

“I think you might be a bit heavy, mate.”

 

“I could scramble.”

 

The heads of all three men turned to face Connor at once, eyeing him as if seeing an opportunity. Connor backed away. “Ohhhhh no. Oh no, no, no, no-“

 

“Come on, Connor,” Stephen said practically, advancing with a glint in his eye. “All you have to do is fall over a fence...”

 

“ _No_!” Connor wailed despairingly, caught a swift glance between Lyle and Kermit, whimpered, and found himself abruptly off the ground, deprived of his rucksack and being heaved over the fence.

 

He landed heavily on a paving stone set into the lawn as part of a path, and swore at the jolt to his backside.

 

“Unbolt the door, there’s a good lad,” Lyle said cheerfully from the other side of the fence.

 

Connor glowered, scrambled to his feet and seriously considered not unbolting the gate, just to show them. Then he realised that that would leave him climbing over the iron gate to get out, and shot back the bolt. The gate swung open, and Stephen came straight through it, eyes already glued to the ground.

 

“Thanks, Conn. Stay _right_ there...”

 

Obediently, Connor stayed still and looked around him while Stephen pounced on a set of tracks crossing the lawn and started to follow it. Then there was a yell from Kermit, a series of gunshots, and Connor was on the floor with his face in the dirt, Kermit kneeling over him with his rifle aimed at the second floor of the building and a man wearing only a towel holding a shotgun and swearing at the top of his voice. Stephen was also on the floor, with Lyle standing over him, and Lyle was busy carrying on a noisy one-sided conversation with the armed man.

 

“Put down your weapon!” Lyle shouted. “Put down your weapon and get your hands in the air or-“

 

“I’ve called the police on you!” the man bawled, and Connor heard in the distance the sound of a siren. The sound of a lot of sirens.

 

“Oh shit,” he said to an unresponsive dandelion.

 

***

 

“I still can’t believe,” Claudia said astringently, twisting in her seat in order to better excoriate the men sitting behind her in the car, “you managed to get _arrested_.”

 

Stephen and Lyle, as the more senior – and therefore the more guilty – members of the expedition, dutifully winced. They had been in the jeep for half an hour, and were both praying for the Mitchells’ hotel to come into view around the next corner, because Claudia (after springing them from their cells at the police station) hadn’t stopped bollocking them for a second. Lyle’s expression suggested that he’d prefer Ryan bawling at him for five minutes straight to Miss Brown dissecting him at the top of her voice and with an unpleasant precision learnt at an expensive university. His ears were ringing with delicately phrased and strongly uttered insults; his common sense, general intelligence, sense of self-preservation and moral worth had all been impugned, and that was just in the last five minutes. Stephen was no better, although Kermit and Connor had escaped with a few broad hints about not having the sense geese were born with.

 

“- as if it wasn’t _bad enough_ breaking into someone’s _garden_ ,” Claudia continued, “you then had to go and aim rifles at him. I don’t know _what_ you thought you were doing –”

 

“He shot at us, Claudia,” Stephen interrupted, clearly feeling that it was time for them to defend themselves. Lyle strongly disagreed.

 

“- _because you broke into his garden_. What do I keep telling you about stupid heroics, Stephen? And this doesn’t even come under the heading of heroics, just stupidity! Unnecessary illegality is not acceptable, even for us! Would it have _killed_ you to go and ring the doorbell?”

 

Ignoring all Lyle’s subtle hints that this was a good time to shut up, Stephen started talking again. He pointed out, with some justice, that Connor had rung the doorbell, twice, and that it wasn’t their fault Mr Adamson had unfortunately been in the shower at the time, and unable to hear. As Lyle had predicted, Claudia steamrollered straight over him.

 

Lyle sighed inaudibly and rested his head against the car window. Mr. Adamson’s excitable reaction to finding two soldiers and two random civilians in his back garden was possibly justified, although if he, Mr Adamson, had the right licence for that shotgun, he, Lieutenant Jonathan Lyle, would eat his tac vest. In any case, the police had descended on them mere moments after Mr Adamson had fired a warning shot over Hart’s head that would have knocked Hart’s brains out if he hadn’t had his nose to the ground examining the tracks (and Lyle was inexpressibly glad he didn’t have to explain _that_ to the boss). In the sheer embarrassment of being arrested, cuffed, and taken off to the local police station under the guard of several very nervous and inexperienced coppers who hadn’t anticipated gun-wielding maniacs on a Monday morning, the reason for their actually being in the garden had got lost. Mr Adamson, whose loudly expressed fury almost distracted the police from the fact that he’d fired a gun at an unarmed man, absolutely refused either to answer questions on any mysterious animal sightings or let them back into his garden, and Hart was sulking about having lost the trail again.

 

No - not sulking; that wasn’t fair. He was experiencing highly professional disappointment.

 

Lyle sneaked a glance at the man in question. The odds were that Hart was experiencing highly professional disappointment and exasperation that he’d been thwarted again, but it certainly looked an awful lot like sulking. It was something about the mulish set of the lips that did it.

 

“Finally!” Claudia said, finishing her extended rant as Jenkins parked the jeep in the hotel’s car park and Lacey brought the other jeep into the parking space beside them. Claudia wrenched off her seatbelt and leapt out of the car; it was possible that she was just the slightest bit annoyed at having been called out to an obscure police station to bail out two members of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces, a lab assistant, and a student.  “I’m going in to tell Lester all about this,” she announced, yanking Lyle’s door open as well before he could even reach for it and making him jump, and glaring furiously at him. “I hope he _shreds_ you!”

 

She slammed the door shut, seemingly relieving feelings of great anger and frustration. Lyle, after waiting for a stunned moment, gingerly opened the door and climbed out. He shared an uncharacteristically wide-eyed look with Stephen.

 

Connor cleared his throat, and studied his toes. “I think she might be a bit angry with us, guys.”

 

Lacey coughed suddenly.

 

“That had better not have been a snigger, Private,” Lyle said ominously.

 

“No sir,” Lacey said, fixing her eyes on the jeep’s paintwork, all traces of a tiny smirk wiped from her face.

 

“ _Good_ ,” Lyle said menacingly, feeling outclassed.


	9. Chapter 9

 

A distant crunch on the gravel and a slight deranged flicker in Claudia’s expression alerted Lester and Lorraine, who (along with most of the hotel) were being brought up to date on Stephen, Connor, Lieutenant Lyle and Kermit’s misdemeanours, to someone’s approach. Lorraine glanced quickly over her shoulder, and Lester, who had evidently guessed that the miscreants were arriving, turned at his leisure to stare through the window and sweep the four with a disdainfully amused look.

 

“Home the conquering heroes come,” he said lazily as the small group filed into the bar, looking thoroughly sheepish. Lorraine took a look at Claudia, whose eyes had narrowed when they’d arrived, and decided that whatever crap she’d got from the police had been handed on to the wrongdoers in spades. Lorraine had been on the job all of a day and a half, and even she knew that reducing Lieutenant Lyle to silence was impressive work.

 

Tactfully, Lorraine slid behind the bar and drifted towards the coffee machine, taking note of Stephen Hart’s dull flush, Connor’s lobster-red embarrassment, and Lyle and Kermit’s officially blank faces. Captain Ryan was glaring at the latter two in a worrying manner. Lorraine wrestled two espressos out of the machine and handed them over to Claudia and Lester, before putting the kettle on for a cup of tea. Surely even the SAS didn’t shout at people while drinking tea. Before or after, yes, but not during; tea would go everywhere. Lorraine was dimly conscious that the less shouting that took place, the more actual work would get done, and Professor Cutter looked as if he was working himself up to shouting on Stephen’s behalf. She wondered if she should also make him a cup of tea, just to keep the peace. Even Abby Maitland seemed prepared to join the fray, and a pitched battle between Lester and Abby Maitland was high on the list of things Lorraine never wanted to witness.

 

Claudia knocked her espresso back at a speed that must have scalded her throat as well as delivering a solid caffeine kick to her nerves, and Lester swallowed his elegantly before returning to his drawling attack. “I suppose you didn’t think to ask the homeowner’s permission before entering? No? I daresay you were overtaken by the thrill of the chase. Captain Ryan.”

 

“Sir,” Ryan said, and Lorraine stuffed a mug of tea into his hands just in time. It almost got dropped, on account of the captain not expecting it.

 

“Five minutes to dispose of your men as you see fit, then I’ll want you back here to take part in a crisis meeting. Dismissed.”

 

Ryan nodded sharply, and left the room, Lyle and Kermit proceeding before him with the tense shoulders of men who were about to be yelled at. Lorraine felt a brief pang of sympathy for them; it wasn’t actually their fault they’d been shot at, although the trespassing had admittedly been very stupid. She also cursed herself for idiocy; of course Lester wouldn’t allow military discipline to disrupt the already disorderly bureaucracy of the anomaly project. She needn’t have worried about a shouting match ruining what efficiency was left to the anomaly project. Feeling stupid, she came out from behind the bar.

 

“Miss Wickes.”

 

Quite without meaning to, Lorraine started. “Sir James.”

 

“What’s your progress on regularising the anomaly project’s records?”

 

Hurriedly, Lorraine pulled herself together and began a brief summary of her work in the past two days, what she hoped to be able to achieve within the week, and the resources – and amounts of other people’s time – she would require. By the looks on Cutter’s and Hart’s faces, she managed a much more credible recital than she thought, and Claudia sneaked her an appreciative grin. Lester didn’t react very much, but seemed reasonably impressed (insofar as you could tell with him) and Lorraine mentally awarded herself a point. Her chances of not getting fired seemed much better than they had done yesterday.

 

When Lester had finished questioning her, Lorraine looked round and found Captain Ryan standing in the doorway behind her, waiting for her to finish speaking; he inclined his head and moved back to his original place.

 

“I take it Lieutenant Lyle and Private Cooper have been suitably chastised?” Lester enquired.

 

Ryan nodded, apparently not keen to elaborate, or possibly just always taciturn. Claudia’s brief portraits of the various team members hadn’t mentioned Ryan as silent, but he’d hardly spoken in Lorraine’s presence. Perhaps Claudia heard quite enough from other members of the team, and was inclined to view Ryan as a pleasant change rather than unusually quiet, or perhaps Ryan considered that his expertise only applied to the field, and therefore only spoke up then.

 

They moved into the hotel’s main dining-room and took up seats around a long table. Lorraine got out her notebook and prepared to take minutes, and guessed by the stares this got her that this wasn’t normal procedure for the anomaly project. She honestly wondered how they’d coped with less than the bare minimum of formal documentation.

 

Lester, who behaved as if he hadn’t noticed her actions, called the meeting to order and began.

 

Lorraine couldn’t complain of his inefficiency, although she thought he lacked an important element of compassion. He had evidently considered almost every aspect of the sabre-tooth problem, and briskly called on Claudia, Professor Cutter and Stephen to summarise the knowledge gleaned that morning. Stephen said that he’d traced the creature from the scene of the last attack, across a common and into Reggie Adamson’s garden, but had lost the trail on account of the arrival of two dozen policemen; it had, however, still been moving south and west. He remained cagey about the exact size, sex and description of the creature, confining himself to suggesting that it was a relatively small adolescent male, but said definitely that it had some kind of injury that meant it favoured its right fore-paw, which by the look of the most recent tracks he’d seen had been exacerbated over the past few days. Professor Cutter managed to get across a surprisingly concise précis of Sam Redford’s evidence, backed up by Abby on some crucial points (“He _hit it with a torch_ and it _went away_? Cutter, are you _sure_?” “He used to be an electrician, Lester, it was a heavy electrician’s torch. And if he hit an old wound, the blow could have explained the wound getting worse and affecting its movement more in the tracks Stephen saw.”) Claudia produced a veritable sea of photocopies from her bag and spread them out on the table.

 

Lester eyed them dubiously and Lorraine couldn’t blame him. “Miss Brown, what on earth?...”

 

“These are the documents I got from the police archives,” Claudia said, and started sorting the photocopies into stacks. “These-“ she held up one stack- “are unresolved missing person reports from the past decade. I haven’t had time to look at them in detail but a quick glance tells me that the numbers have gone way up over the past year. These-“ she lifted another stack- “are complaints of livestock being mauled and harassed over the same time period. There’s also been an increase there, but over the past three years. And those down close to you, Professor, are wild animal sightings. I think we should map all three; I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a correlation.”

 

Stephen Hart leaned over the table and took the sheaf of papers on wild animal sightings. He started to leaf through them slowly as Lester perused the reports of missing people. Lester laid down his papers first, and gave Stephen a look that suggested he should do the same so that the meeting could proceed.

 

Hart completely ignored him.

 

Lester gave an irritable cough.

 

“Bless you,” Professor Cutter said. A tiny smile quirked at Stephen’s mouth, but he kept reading. Captain Ryan’s face went carefully blank.

 

Lester gave Cutter a look that would have withered a lesser man. “Dr Hart.”

 

Stephen looked up, and put the papers down slowly. He met Lester’s eyes with, Lorraine was interested to see, _very_ carefully calculated innocence. When she had first encountered Stephen, she had suspected him of being very good in his field and otherwise inept, but she now wondered if he was simply much brighter than he looked, with a pronounced dislike of new people.  

 

“Just familiarising myself with the information out there,” Stephen said levelly. Lorraine suspected him of making it clear that he was an expert in his field as well as a pretty face, and – while she found it difficult to blame him – she wished he’d chosen a less incendiary method of doing so.

 

“I can see that,” Lester said acidly. “Do you think a detailed appraisal could wait until later? People are dying. Something needs to be done.”

 

Cutter gave Lester a surprised and pleased look, as if Lester had suddenly declared himself a fully paid-up member of the human race.

 

Lester’s mouth twisted sourly. “Cutter, is there any reason for that imbecilic expression, or does it come naturally?”

 

“I didn’t think the casualties concerned you,” Cutter said, with more frankness than tact.

 

Lester’s fingers twitched on the table. “We _are_ here to safeguard the public, Cutter.”

 

“Well, I know that, but I didn’t think you-“

 

“-cared?” Lester supplied, ice coating his words.

 

“Yes,” Cutter said cheerfully. “It’s a pleasant surprise, don’t get me wrong-“

 

Claudia poured herself a glass of water for the express purpose of offering everyone else one. Lorraine, catching her drift, loudly accepted one, as did Captain Ryan, effectively breaking up the argument in the making.

 

 Lester also took a glass of water, and seized the opportunity to change the subject to their future plans. “The local police are ready to call us in if anything suspicious happens and I want everyone ready to go at once, on a moment’s notice. We’ve seen that this creature knows this area and has a habit of disappearing from under our noses. It’s as bad as your ex-wife, Cutter-“

 

The Professor spluttered, getting water all over some of Claudia’s photocopies and precipitating embarrassment and apologies.

 

“-although I really think that’s unfair to it,” Lester sailed serenely through the conversational interruption, “but the question is: can anything be done _immediately_? The creature must have some sort of... lair?”

 

Stephen and Abby glanced at each other, then both shrugged. Claudia had said that they seemed to make a good team when they worked together, and Lorraine supposed that the reliance of this case on animal behaviour played to their strengths. “The problem is,” Abby said, “this creature isn’t behaving like a normal animal. It’s a man-eater: that makes it abnormal in the first place, before you get on to anything else.”

 

“Most wild creatures in our time, even animals like leopards or lions, will run from humans unless provoked,” Stephen corroborated. “Humans’ bipedal stance is unique in the animal world; it confuses them. Man-eating is usually caused by an injury that means they can’t hunt their normal prey.”

 

“And this animal’s behaving like it’s got some kind of... homing instinct,” Abby said more tentatively, glancing at Stephen again as if to confirm her theory. “It’s heading straight for something.”

 

“So while you might normally expect that it would have a semi-permanent lair you could trace it to,” Stephen concluded, “and we might even be able to find it if we look at the data Claudia’s brought in, or some kind of home range anyway, I don’t think it’s using that space now. It’s on the move.”

 

            Lester pursed his lips. “So I suppose we just have to wait.”

 

            Stephen nodded. “We haven’t got enough to go on. It knows this place well enough to hide from us. If it wasn’t killing people we’d probably never even have heard of it, it would’ve been written off as conspiracy theory nuts seeing shadows.”

 

            Connor examined the ceiling intently.

 

            “I’m not talking about you, Conn.”

 

            Lester merely raised an eyebrow in a manner that suggested that, given half a chance, he would have been talking about Connor. “In that case, I think we’re finished here. Dr Hart, see what you can make of that data; we might get something useful from it yet. Miss Wickes, I want a copy of those minutes when you’ve typed them up. And I want you all ready to go at the drop of a hat. If one thing’s become clear it’s that that bloody animal moves fast.”

 

            Lorraine gave him a startled look, and got an irritable look back.

 

“ _Obviously_ excluding you, Miss Wickes.”    

 

 

***

 

“I’m telling you,” the oldest of the children said in exasperation, “there’s _nothing there_.” A pleasant-faced girl with a pinched expression born of presiding over her younger brother’s friends for the past two hours, she stared at the bushes on the edge of the adventure playground as if daring them to yield a monster.

 

They did not oblige.

 

“I’m scared,” her younger brother announced. “Kayla...”

 

“Scaredy cat,” Kayla said disparagingly, seized a large stick, and marched forward, beating at the bushes.

 

“ _Kayla_!” the boy screeched, and the bushes erupted as a tawny streak of motion shot out of them and directly at Kayla.

 

The girl screamed and brandished her stick, a solid whack across its head making it falter for a moment, but then it bounded forward again, and Kayla screamed again, still trying to hit it with her stick. The other children fled shrieking, Kayla’s brother still yelling her name as if that would do any good, and adults came rushing to the spot, parents and supervisors from some of the adventure playground’s activities, all of them shouting, trying to work out what was happening. One of the parents, approaching at a run from Kayla’s right, picked up a couple of stones and hurled them at the creature, narrowly missing Kayla but hitting the creature squarely on the shoulder; it staggered growled and darted away, leaving Kayla staggering, weeping with fear and bleeding from the few glancing blows the cat had managed to land.

 

“Mum,” Kayla sobbed as her mother completed a thousand metre sprint across the park at a speed that would have qualified her for the Olympics, “Mum, it was a tiger, there was a _tiger_ -” and she keeled over into the grass and wood-chippings, terrified and bleeding. 

 

“Funny she should say that,” one parent observed from a distance, suitably relaxed now that he knew his child was not involved and a first-aider was in charge. “My son brought that story home from school – said there was a kid in the year below who kept talking about it.”

 

Another parent hummed, a slight note of disapproval in her voice. “Well, I don’t think it was a _tiger_ , but...”

 

“The police ought to shoot it,” the first parent said, looking around for his son. “Whatever it was, it went straight for her.”

 

***

 

Claudia’s phone rang and, after a frantic moment of hunting through her pockets, she grabbed it and answered the call. Cutter, Abby, Connor and Stephen, who were all working on finding correlations in the data Claudia had brought them, hardly even twitched. Lorraine, who was sitting across the table from her labelling lever-arch files and file dividers in neat black ink, looked up.

 

“Hello... Yes, speaking.” She waved a frantic hand at Lorraine, trying to evoke paper and a pen, and Lorraine slid a pad of Post-It notes and a biro across the table. Claudia uncapped the biro and started to scribble. “Where exactly? I see. Greenway or Green _a_ way? Thank you. Who was hurt, again – just the one girl? What was her name? Surname? Could you spell that?... Thanks. Which hospital was she taken to? Okay. Right. Thank you. We’ll be with you as soon as possible...”

 

She ended the call, ripped the Post-It note she’d besmirched off the pad and stuck it into the back of her diary, and got up, hurriedly sweeping her things into her handbag. By this time, she’d got the team’s attention – especially Stephen, whose eyes had gone keen and steel-hard; Claudia had the impression that he was taking the creature’s disappearing acts very personally.

 

“What is it? Is it an anomaly?” Cutter was on his feet, but somewhat slow to catch on.

 

“There’s been another attack.” Claudia went to call Lester, realised that he was in the middle of the appointment Lorraine had made for him to see Frederic Cowell, the second victim’s ex-husband, and texted him instead. “The victim survived – she wasn’t badly hurt – but it was in an adventure playground, with hundreds of kids. Connor, look up Greenaway Park, I want to know everything there is to know about it.”

 

Connor, who’d been building graphs, switched to the internet and started Googling, Stephen and Abby left the room in a hurry, and Claudia headed for Captain Ryan’s room to tell him what was happening. Nick followed her.

 

“I want you to go to Greenaway Park,” she told him. “The attack only happened forty-five minutes ago – the creature may still be nearby. And Nick, if you find it...”

 

“Kill it,” Cutter said promptly, and a light in his eyes said that despite everything he’d caught her accidental use of his first name.

 

She cursed herself; now was really now the moment for whatever was developing between the two of them.

 

“I’m not _stupid_ , Claudia Brown – it’s a man-eater.”

 

 “I’m glad to hear we’re on the same wavelength,” Claudia said testily to cover her irritation at herself, knocked on Captain Ryan’s door and burst through shortly afterwards. He was just looking up, a surprised expression on his face and surrounded by bits of gun.

 

“Miss Brown,” he said, stern professional mask settling back into place.

 

“There’s been another attack,” Claudia said without pre-amble. “A child. She’s alive. It was at a place called Greenaway Park – Connor will have the address by now – and it was only three-quarters of an hour ago so the creature might not be miles away already. I’m going to the hospital – the mother might go to the press...”

 

Captain Ryan was already on his feet and moving, the gun reassembled in seconds and slotted into a shoulder holster. “Get Private Lacey to drive you, Miss Brown. Professor, do all the others know – Temple, Hart and Miss Maitland?”

 

“Yes,” Cutter said, “I was just going to-”

 

The blur of speed formerly known as Stephen Hart screeched to a restless stop outside Captain Ryan’s room. “Ryan-” Stephen stopped, registered the others’ presence, and flushed slightly. “You already know, then. Right.” He cleared his throat, and awkwardly handed Cutter’s coat to him. “Brought your jacket, Cutter.”

 

“Thanks, Stephen,” Cutter said, looking at his assistant as if he’d never seen him before.

 

“Welcome,” Stephen said, and sneaked a glance at Captain Ryan, perceptibly itching to be on the move. “Where are we going?”

 

“Greenaway Park,” Captain Ryan said, and gave Stephen something that was practically a smile, grey eyes glittering. “Go and sign out a rifle, Hart.”

 

Stephen grinned and nodded, then disappeared at speed. Captain Ryan followed him, and Claudia and Nick were left staring at each other.

 

“What was that?” Nick demanded, sounding rather as if Stephen’s odd behaviour had pulled the rug of sanity out from beneath the feet of genius.

 

“I have no idea,” Claudia said, larger concerns than Captain Ryan and Stephen’s hearts-and-flowers moment intruding on her thought processes. “You’ll have to ask them yourself.”

 

“I think I’d rather be eaten by a T-rex,” Nick said in instinctive horror, and Claudia flashed him a smile and hurried downstairs to where Private Lacey and a car with the engine running were waiting.

 

“Where to, ma’am?” Lacey said, as Claudia bolted into the front seat and strapped herself in.

 

“Cheltenham General Hospital, please,” Claudia said, and, thinking about the press, added: “As fast as you can.”

 

The grin on Lacey’s face suggested that might have been an unwise addition, and Claudia took firm hold on the handle above her window.

 

 

Some time later – but still much more quickly than Claudia had expected – Lacey slowed the car to a more decorous pace and drew up in front of the hospital’s main reception. Claudia thanked Lacey, warned her that she might be some time and scrambled out of the car all in the same breath. She took a moment to compose herself and paste a bland smile onto her face before striding purposefully into the hospital and up to the reception desk.

 

“Claudia Brown, Home Office,” she said, flashing her ID. “I’m looking for Mrs Julianne Littlejohn and her daughter Kayla. I understand Kayla was brought to Accident and Emergency earlier this afternoon after a feral animal attack, and I need to speak to her about her experience.”

 

The receptionist looked poleaxed, possibly because of Claudia’s very toothy smile, or possibly because Claudia’s soft brown eyes had suddenly turned as hard and implacable as teak; without taking her eyes off Claudia, she stammered out the name of the ward and provided Claudia with a map.

 

Claudia thanked her without losing either the toothy smile or the hardness in her eyes, and followed the map to the ward in question. Because it was, as might have been expected, completely confusing and not designed for use by normal humans, this took her a little while – but eventually she found her way to the right ward and went in without being challenged by any of the nurses on duty, who seemed otherwise occupied.

 

One of the nurses in question was busy talking to and checking the pulse of a girl with braided hair who looked as if she smiled a lot, but had been recently frightened and was still quite shaky; she was being hovered over by a woman in jeans and a t-shirt who closely resembled her, and looked worn to shreds with nerves. Claudia deduced that these were the people she was looking for. She went over and waited patiently while the nurse finished working. Then she gave the two a broad smile, and said as nicely as she could: “Are you Mrs Julianne Littlejohn, ma’am? And you must be Kayla, miss?”

 

Julianne Littlejohn nodded. Her hand was wrapped tightly around her daughter’s much smaller one.

 

“I’m Claudia Brown – Home Office,” Claudia continued, showing Mrs Littlejohn her ID but concentrating on the girl. “I wondered if I could ask Kayla a few questions about the animal attack, and of course, if you have any questions I’ll answer them to the best of my ability. There’s a feral creature in the area, and we believe that’s what attacked Kayla. We’re hunting it now.” She smiled directly at Kayla. “Anything you can tell me about it would be extremely valuable.”

 

“Of course, Miss Brown.” Mrs Littlejohn, whose Cardiff accent would have knocked a weaker woman than Claudia off her feet, glanced uncertainly at her daughter, and squeezed her hand gently. “I don’t know – Kayla, can you answer the lady’s questions? The nurses gave her a sedative,” she explained to Claudia.

 

“If you’re feeling too sleepy I can come back later,” Claudia said to Kayla, hiding her anxiety that the child would fall asleep and wouldn’t be able to tell her anything for hours, while the animal escaped and other people were at risk.

 

Kayla shook her head and the pearly pink beads on the end of her braids clattered. Unfortunately, she also yawned. Claudia decided that speed was of the essence and fetched herself a chair.

 

“Okay,” she said, taking out a notebook and uncapping her pen. “Can you tell me exactly what happened, Kayla?”

 

“I was with Harry,” Kayla said, “he’s my brother, he’s only eight, and he gets scared of lots of things, like the dark. And we were in the adventure playground, at the edges where there are all these big bushes...” She yawned again and blinked sleepily. “And Harry said there was a monster in the bushes, and I said there wasn’t, and he was all scared so I picked up a stick and, like, hit the bushes and this thing came out and tried to eat me...” She shivered and pressed closer to her mother, who put an arm around her shoulders. “I hit it lots.”

 

“That was very brave of you, Kayla. What did it look like? Can you remember?”

 

“’Course,” Kayla said with mild scorn. “It was sort of brownish, and huge and it had lots of teeth. It smelled like blood.” She yawned again.

 

“Thank you very much, Kayla.” Claudia jotted down the girl’s description. The ‘huge’ bit confused her, but then Kayla was quite small and the creature would have been large in comparison. “That’s very useful. Do you have any questions?”

 

“What was it? It was like a _tiger_.” Kayla should by rights have been half-asleep, but her big brown eyes flashed wide open.

 

“Not quite,” Claudia said with a reassuring smile, preparing to haul out the brand-new cover story she’d cooked up with special advice from Stephen and Abby after the meeting. “Tigers are much bigger. We aren’t exactly sure what species it is, we’ll know when we’ve trapped it, but our animal experts think it’s some kind of wildcat, possibly a caracal, that someone kept as a pet and which escaped. When we know what it is we can trace the owner, but it may have escaped _years_ ago. It’s illegal to keep wild cats as pets, so whoever it was obviously didn’t report it missing. Don’t worry, we’ll catch it.”

 

“Good,” Kayla’s mother said vehemently. “I hope you kill it.  Attacking kids like that, it’s not safe.”

 

“Exactly, Mrs Littlejohn.” Claudia smiled. “We’re on the case. Did you see the animal, by the way?”

 

Mrs Littlejohn shook her head. “No. I was on the other side of the park – I ran when I heard the screaming, but it was just running when I arrived. I only saw a flicker.”

 

 “I see.” Claudia tore a page out of her notebook and wrote her work mobile number on it, along with her name. “I think I’ve got all the information I need. Thank you, Mrs Littlejohn, and you, Kayla. I hope you feel better soon. Here’s my number; if you have any trouble or there’s anything I can help you with, don’t hesitate to call me.”

 

“Thank you,” Mrs Littlejohn said, taking the slip of paper and tucking it into her handbag. “I – look, they are going to catch it, aren’t they?”

 

“Yes,” Claudia said, looking Mrs Littlejohn in the eye and hoping she could inspire confidence. “We’re on its trail now.” She flashed a rather insincere smile. “If you’ll excuse me...”

 

Mrs Littlejohn nodded, and her eyes turned to her daughter, now sleeping peacefully. Claudia looked at the little girl again and flinched at the sight of the bandages on her arms, and the knowledge of those hidden by the sheet. How close had Kayla Littlejohn come to death, really? If the creature hadn’t been weak and scared off so quickly, would she have survived?

 

She left as quickly as possible.


	10. Chapter 10

Adrian Upminster hated his stupid school, hated his stupid paper-round, and hated his stupid parents, who never seemed to care about anything except his stupid grades. In fact, he liked exactly two things in life right now, Tom Leroy and cycling, and the latter was an excellent escape from wondering what he was going to do when his parents found out about the former. It was all right meeting up at the velodrome, away from the lads at school – most of whom, Adrian freely admitted, had only two brain-cells to rub together and kept both of them in their dicks – and making out a bit was just fine by Adrian, but he couldn’t help thinking that either his parents weren’t going to take the whole might-be-gay thing very well, or...

 

Adrian never finished that thought. He was on the trail marked ‘fiendish’ by the Greenaway Park management, and which Adrian deigned to call ‘child’s play’. Still, his momentary lack of attention had a heavy price: he hit a tree-root, went sprawling over the handlebars of his bike, landed flat on his back with a fractured spine that he never found out about, because (having hit his head on a rock) he passed out.

 

He was thus easy meat for the terrified, ravenous and pain-maddened creature that loped awkwardly onto the trail only a few moments later.

 

***

 

The sound of Ryan’s men, the park employees and the policemen Lester had called out to help evacuate Greenaway Park was a very, very welcome one to Nick Cutter. Greenaway Park had turned out to be not only an adventure playground, but also an entire complex: a massive adventure playground Nick would have killed for access to when he was a kid, a smaller playground for the little kids, a paintballing area carefully fenced off from the rest of the park and a massive, wooded area filled with nothing but cycling and hiking trails. Stephen had been cautiously pleased at the discovery, reasoning that the creature wasn’t likely to have left the park, but that it would be almost impossible to find it in such a complex environment.

 

In this case, Nick took ‘almost impossible’ to mean ‘I’ll have it done by sundown’, and he sincerely hoped he was right, because the park wasn’t even half evacuated yet, let alone sealed off, and it was already late afternoon. Any closer to nightfall, and their chances of finding the creature would diminish spectacularly. Stephen and Abby were pretty clear on one point: there was a very good chance that the creature’s night vision was brilliant, and nightfall would make the park the creature’s playground.

 

Nick decided that was an unfortunate choice of wording in the circumstances, and that if he’d said it out loud Claudia Brown would have killed him, or just have given him one of those devastating you-are-the-greatest-fool-on-the- _planet_ looks.

 

He looked down at Connor, who was sitting on an incomprehensible piece of playground equipment, running the few details they knew about the creature through his database over and over again. “How’s it going?” he asked, even though he knew as well as Connor did that the data they had wasn’t enough to pin the animal down.

 

Connor tilted his head from side to side in a distracted manner, fingers flying over his keyboard. “Not great.” He looked up at Cutter. “We haven’t got enough information,” he said unhappily.

 

“Stephen will catch it and then we’ll have all the information we want,” Cutter said confidently, and put a comforting hand on Connor’s shoulder. “And then, if we meet another of these beasties, we’ll know exactly what it is.”

 

Connor mumbled something and tapped a few keys. He did not sound remotely comforted.

 

Cutter decided that whatever was going on in Connor’s head, it was well beyond his ken, and went over to Ryan. Adey was standing guard over Connor; no harm could possibly come to the lad, unless he said something inadvisable to Abby. Adey had an obvious crush on Abby and would probably stand back and let her mince Connor.

 

“How’s the evacuation?” he said to Ryan.

 

Ryan, who looked to be in a foul mood, pressed his lips together tightly. “The playgrounds and the park employees’ headquarters are sorted, professor, so is the paintballing – although some bloody idiot paintballed Finn in the arse by mistake-“

 

Cutter sniggered. The look that developed on Ryan’s face suggested that he wasn’t in the right frame of mind to appreciate the jest.

 

“- but there’s still a few hikers and cyclists out there.”

 

“Oh, that’s bad,” Cutter said, losing his amusement at Finn’s expense even as the soldier in question limped past, black uniform marred by a yellow splotch on his left buttock. “Stephen said that was where he’d expect to find the animal.”

 

The hikers’ and cyclists’ trails were based on a large piece of land that abutted onto both the smaller playgrounds and paintballing areas, in order to keep the two well apart. The piece of land in question was fairly densely wooded with plenty of undergrowth except for the narrow trails, providing much more cover than either the paintballing areas or the playgrounds. Although there was a fence separating the trail area from the paintballing or playground, the park employees (when pressed by a grim-faced Lyle) admitted that they couldn’t account for the strength of the fences and didn’t even know if they were all whole. Most were locals, but none of them lived very close to the park except a woman called Valerie Irwin, who had helped clear the paintballing arena and was now trying to deal with a stag party from Bristol who were less than thrilled by their truncated day out.

 

Ryan grunted, which was probably meant to stand in for an acknowledgement that this was so. “We’ve got some of the coppers and some of my lads out looking for them. Luckily they have to sign in at the gate before going in, and we know there are only six of them left out there.” A crackle came from his radio headset, and a small grim smile curved at his lips. “Make that four... Any ideas on where the rest are, Ditz?”

 

Another unintelligible crackle, and then shouting that even Nick could hear through the black earpiece. The satisfied expression fell off Ryan’s face, and he barked a question at Ditzy, miles off in the middle of the hikers’ paradise. Nick waited with bated breath.

 

“ _Oh shit, oh... shit_ ,” came through the earpiece, crackly and tinny but still recognisably Ditzy. “ _We’ve lost one, boss_.”

 

Nick turned away, finding the stony expression on Ryan’s face difficult to look at. Connor and Adey, only a few steps away, had caught a sense of something happening and were looking over at them, but Cutter had no attention to spare for either of them. He spotted Stephen, Abby, and a dark-haired woman who was taller than Abby by several inches approaching, and shouted: “Stephen! Stephen, get here!”

 

Stephen was already at a jog; he sped up, and so did Abby and the other woman with him, although only Abby kept up, being impressively fit. “What’s happened?” Stephen demanded when he arrived, and his eyes cut sideways to Captain Ryan. A look of instant concern developed on his handsome face, and Nick glanced over his shoulder to see if Captain Ryan looked as if he were about to top himself, or something equally unlikely. Ryan was partially turned away, a hand to his earpiece; he looked tense, but there was no reason that Nick could see for Stephen’s anxiety.

 

“Someone’s dead,” he said shortly. “Don’t know who. One of the hikers or cyclists. Who’s this?”

 

“Oh.” Stephen focussed on Nick again; Abby had come up to stand on his right, and the strange woman was standing on his left. “Valerie, this is Nick Cutter – I told you about him. Nick, this is Valerie Irwin, she thinks she saw the creature early this morning. Where’s the dead person?”

 

“Don’t know. Cyclists’ area, I guess. Go and talk to Ryan.” Nick turned his attention to Valerie, but did not fail to notice that Stephen had taken off towards Captain Ryan with remarkable speed. He really had no idea what was going on _there_ , and would have to ask Stephen at some time when Stephen wasn’t entirely consumed by his need to hunt down and dispose of the creature. “Miss Valerie...”

 

“Irwin,” the woman supplied, a little diffidently. She was pretty, in a slightly nervous-looking kind of way; Abby was watching her carefully, which Nick took as a warning. Abby was a decent judge of character, although a very cautious one. “Valerie Irwin. And it’s Ms, actually.”  


“Ms Irwin, then,” Nick said, feeling slightly knocked off course. “You said you saw the creature?”

 

“I saw an animal,” Valerie said cautiously. “I don’t know if it’s the one you’re looking for, but it didn’t look like it was from round here. It was early this morning, about six o’clock, but it was getting light. I’d just got up – I’m one of the people who opens up the park because I live so close in, so I have to be up early – and I saw it out of the bathroom window when I was brushing my teeth. I live in the local wood; I mean, not that far in, very close to the road, but my house is set in a sort of clearing thing instead of having a back garden. I saw the creature cross the clearing.”

 

Nick sorted through this for relevant information. “Did you see what it looked like?”

 

“Yes,” Valerie said cautiously. “But it was a bit far away.  It was... I don’t know, it looked sort of like a cougar, you know, the American big cat...”  


“Yes, we know,” Abby interrupted.

 

Valerie flushed a little. “Sorry. Only this one was – it had sort of big bones but not very much flesh on them. And it looked in horrible condition. It was limping, moving really slowly.”

 

Nick got a slight sinking feeling. “You know it’s a killer, don’t you, Valerie?”

 

“Oh, yes!” Valerie exclaimed, eyes flying wide. “I know.”

 

“At least three people have died,” Abby said quietly, watching Valerie with wary eyes. “One of them a five-year-old boy.”

 

“That’s horrible!” Valerie said, flinching. “I wouldn’t have thought – it didn’t look like it could...”

 

“It did,” Abby said flatly.

 

Nick cleared his throat. “Well – thank you for your information, Miss Irwin. Ms Irwin, sorry. Do you know what direction the creature was going in?”

 

“Towards the park, roughly,” Valerie said.

 

“Don’t you think you’d better be going home?” Nick said. “Have you got a car here, or...?”

 

“Travis gave me a lift in,” Valerie volunteered. “He’s still here – he was on the gate at the trails area.”

 

“In that case, you’d better wait for him at the perimeter,” Nick said firmly. “I don’t think it would be a good idea to go home on foot.”

 

Valerie shuddered. “No. I somehow don’t think... No.” She walked away, and Nick saw that Abby’s untrusting stare was following her over to the distant police cordon.

 

“You don’t like her.”

 

“No,” Abby said slowly. “I don’t. She thinks she knows something about big cats, but she’s a lot more sentimental than anyone who actually worked with animals ever would be.” Abby frowned and shrugged. “I don’t know what’s up with her.”

 

“Oh well,” Nick said. “I can’t see how she could have anything to do with the creature. She did sound like she’d put a dish of kibble out for it given half a chance, but...”

 

“Yeah,” Abby said, and then Stephen striding back to them caught her attention. “What’s up?”

 

“It was a boy who was killed,” Stephen said without preamble. “Fifteen, sixteen. A keen cyclist. Ditzy thinks he had an accident – hit a rock and flipped over his handlebars or something – and knocked himself out, and the creature found him when he was out for the count. There’s nothing to show resistance, and let’s face it, if a kid could fight off this thing with a stick and some stone-throwing adults...!”

 

“You’ve got a plan,” Nick told him, smiling involuntarily not out of any great joy but out of Stephen not being miserable any more. It was stating the blinding obvious: Stephen wasn’t happy, but his face glowed with a new confidence and determination, and he was standing straighter.

 

Stephen nodded, and rubbed his hands on his jeans. “I’m going to go and have a look at the site now. Ditzy thinks they scared the creature off, the tracks around the boy’s body were very fresh, but it’s maddened, it’s nowhere near rational and I reckon there’s a good chance it’ll come back, especially if it’s given a reason. Ditzy says there’s somewhere that might be a good site for a machan...”

 

“A _what_?” Abby asked, looking completely bewildered.

 

“A platform in the trees for hunting from,” Nick elaborated. One of the few books Stephen reliably kept around were Jim Corbett’s autobiographical stories of hunting man-eaters; he had beautiful first editions of them, inscribed for Christmas 1990 in a woman’s handwriting, and Nick suspected they’d been presents from Stephen’s parents but had never quite liked to ask. Since Nick was one of those people who would pick up other people’s books and read them, he had read the Corbett books several times, and had picked up some of the Kiplingesque Anglo-Indian terminology.

 

A thought occurred to Nick, and he glanced at the dimming sky. “Have you got time to build a machan?”

 

Stephen waved a surprisingly curt dismissive hand. “I might have time to stick two planks in a tree. Doesn’t matter. All I need is a rifle and bait. I’ve got one...”

 

“Where are you getting the bait from, then?” Nick enquired, at the same time as Claudia Brown marched up to them, demanding in a business-like tone to know what they’d found out.

 

A suspiciously innocent smile spread across Stephen’s face, and Nick was immediately aware that he was about to do something outrageous and childish. The last time he’d seen that look, it had heralded Stephen and Connor salting Lester’s tea. “Evening, Miss Brown. D’you know where we can find a goat in the next hour?”

 

***

 

It wasn’t that Lorraine was running out of things to do; more that she was running out of the will to do them. She had finished filing away the records that the anomaly project had in her neatly labelled files, and (after allowing herself half an hour’s coffee break and hunting down Mary to get a plaster for a massive paper-cut) was now typing them up in Word documents, to be saved onto the basic memory sticks she’d bought. Her mind was reeling ahead of her fingers as they typed on automatic, wondering about password protections and what Connor knew about computer security; a number of the reports were handwritten, but so far this had only posed an actual problem in a few cases. Someone had not taught Connor Temple how to spell _or_ structure a piece of writing, and Lieutenant Lyle’s grammar was unspeakable. Furthermore, she was clearly going to have to lay down some ground rules: coffee circles on reports were acceptable, bloodstains were not.

 

Lorraine accidentally typed a strongly-worded condemnation of bloodstains on reports instead of Abby’s brusque description of a dead triceratops (cause of death: carnosaur), and muttered at herself.

 

“Talking to yourself, Miss Wickes?” Sir James demanded, making Lorraine jump, and forcing her to rescue the open binder in front of her from her own coffee.

 

“Certainly not, Sir James,” she said quellingly, deleting the errant phrase and replacing it with the words she had meant to type.

 

Sir James wandered over to the bar and leant against it, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his suit despite the havoc it would probably wreak on the cut. He stared over Lorraine’s head out of the window, and became part of the silence which had enveloped the Mitchells’ hotel since the team’s departure. Even the Mitchells’ kids were quiescent, forced inside by their parents’ knowledge of the nearby man-eater and sulkily attending to their homework.

 

Lorraine hadn’t minded so much when it was just the quiet of the completely empty bar. She had had to come down from her room because it had felt lonely and eerie, and because she wanted to know the moment the team came back. At least she knew that the few soldiers left at the Mitchells’ were playing snooker in the games room and probably wouldn’t care if she came in and sat down in a corner to work somewhere that wasn’t a barren wasteland. But Sir James’ presence made the quiet seem more insidious, and the hotel more deserted.

 

Besides, despite the fact that he was very definitely looking over her head and through the window behind her, she felt horribly like he was scrutinising her work. Lorraine thumped her laptop keys with more violence than strictly necessary and felt slightly insulted.

 

“I suppose this is not what you expected,” Sir James said at last.

 

Lorraine paused and collected her thoughts, shepherding them away from fulminations on Special Forces officers who couldn’t use commas. “No,” she conceded after a moment, and resumed her typing. “Then again, sir, I’m not sure what I was expecting.”

 

“Dinosaurs,” Sir James said, in tones that suggested that he hadn’t meant to hire an idiot.

 

“Not in the _office_ , sir,” Lorraine told him with gentle reproof. “It wouldn’t be _tidy_.”

 

Something that might have been a slight smile twitched at Sir James’ lips. “Exactly so. I’m glad to hear that you at least have sensible opinions on dinosaurs, Miss Wickes. You will find that makes you something of an oddity in this workplace.”

 

“With respect, sir,” Lorraine said, saving her last document onto the memory stick and moving on to a report by Stephen Hart with almost perfect grammar and unblemished spelling but tiny, cramped handwriting, “this workplace is full of oddities. One more won’t make a difference.”

 

Sir James snorted. “Indeed.” He was silent for another long moment, and then said: “Let me tell you what we deal with, Miss Brown and I. Mostly me, in fact, as Miss Brown’s time is largely taken up with keeping Professor Cutter and his demented disciples out of trouble.”

 

Lorraine stopped typing and looked up at him in order to show willing.

 

Sir James took a deep breath, glanced at the toes of his (no doubt hand-made) shoes, and looked at Lorraine. There was a look in his eyes she’d never seen on his face before: harder, more ruthless, but also more honest. “This project is small. Much too small, considering its potential for catastrophe. We’re stretched to our very limits or beyond them by just this case, our official base is a ridiculously small suite of rooms, we don’t have the funding for proper research into the anomalies – something that could make us a proactive organisation as opposed to a reactive one. It’s absurd. _But_. I am not the only one who realises this – that there is a potential in this project which is not reflected by the resources devoted to it. We are at risk, Miss Wickes. It is my job to defend Professor Cutter and his gaggle of mavericks, and to ensure that their, ah... over-enthusiastic but nonetheless altruistic spirit informs the future approach to anomalies, because I am _convinced_ that the moment someone attempts to exploit these anomalies for personal gain...” He broke off, and made a sharp hand gesture. “I’m sure you can imagine a full range of consequences.”

 

Lorraine stared at her laptop screen. What could you do with anomalies? If you could learn to open them yourself and direct the time they were opened to, you could sell inside information to people in your own time, predict the future for them, tell their fortunes. You could leave criminals in a barren wasteland where they would die unremembered and unlamented, the chances of their bones turning up in the fossil records so small as to be nullified, the ultimate improvement on nineteenth-century transportation. You could attempt big-game hunting, or seek to influence the past and play out a horrible mockery of speculative history. You could manage an escape from the scene of a crime that would be almost undetectable: you could simply disappear.

 

Lorraine’s laptop went blank as her screensaver kicked in. Metallic, improbably-coloured pipes started building matrices all over the screen, and Lorraine blinked and started. She looked back at Lester. “I can imagine, sir.”

 

Sir James smiled grimly. “I thought you might be able to.”  He glanced out of the window again.

 

Lorraine decided that it was her duty to vocalise what Sir James evidently refused to. “Do you think the team will be all right?”

 

Sir James sniffed. “I imagine so. They’re certainly not paid to die.” He paused. “This is the worst bit, Miss Wickes. Waiting to find out what’s happened – what horrors they have perpetrated on an innocent country.”

 

Lorraine smiled determinedly, but didn’t fail to catch the note of genuine anxiety in among the acerbic filler. “I don’t think even the most determined optimist could call Britain innocent, Sir James. I was just thinking of making a cup of tea – would you like one?”

 

“That would be very welcome, Miss Wickes,” Sir James said with dignity, prising himself off the bar as if to draw a line under their conversation and declare it closed. “Tea is a solution to every crisis. Milk but no sugar, please – and I prefer Earl Grey.”

 

“Certainly, sir,” Lorraine said calmly, but when Sir James sneaked a glance out of the window she found her eyes following his. Darkness was falling, slowly – very slowly – but surely, creeping in on the afternoon and casting long shadows over the team at Greenaway Park.

 

Lorraine felt a pang of fear. _Creatures like this one hunt in the dark, don’t they?_ she thought, and suddenly caught Lester’s eye. The mix of fear, smooth facade, and grim knowledge that someone had to do something about the killer animal shocked her into composing herself. It was good to be almost an outsider, it seemed. Someone with a little distance, for a time.

 

“I can’t seem to remember where the kettle is,” she lied apologetically.

 

Lester let out a barely-stifled cluck of disapproval, but tore himself away from the window. “Follow me.”


	11. Chapter 11

 

 

“I still can’t understand,” Nick said in tones of admiration that would have been thoroughly gratifying if she was less annoyed, “where you found the goat. You’re a goddess, Claudia Brown.”

 

“Yes, well,” Claudia said crossly, too irritated to blush and enjoy the compliment, “after the goat, Stephen had better pull this off, that’s all I can say.”

 

“He will,” Nick said with touching faith. Claudia, who remembered a certain incident in the London Underground, was less convinced, but she had to admit that Stephen was very, very good at his job, and some of the stories Nick had told on previous occasions of Stephen’s tracking and shooting skills suggested that Stephen could pull this off.

 

 _Just so long as the creature turns up_ , Claudia thought, and rocked back and forward on her heels, staring abstractedly at the darkening sky. She was standing at the perimeter Ryan and his men had established, with the benefit of a police presence and police tape flapping gently in the breeze, a welcome veneer of normal officialdom. Abby and Connor were close by, Connor having what looked to be a very, very complicated discussion with Nick, and Abby reading furiously, her head bent over what Claudia strongly suspected was a textbook on feline anatomy. Adey, having lent her a torch, was now unashamedly reading over her shoulder. Lieutenant Lyle was keeping an eye on Nick and Connor, which Claudia welcomed, even though she didn’t really think there was anything they could get in trouble over – not here, at least.

 

Claudia really hoped that that wasn’t just wishful thinking.

 

She sighed and rocked on her heels again, then checked her Blackberry for the millionth time. There was no word from Lester or Lorraine; there had been a text ten minutes ago from Lorraine. Only two words: ‘any developments?’ Claudia had engaged in some brevity one-upwomanship and replied ‘none’.

 

That single word still held true. Although there had been an hour of frantic activity, finding rope and planks and nails to build the makeshift machan in the tree Stephen had chosen, searching out a goat and persuading Stephen that he couldn’t sit in his perch and wait for a killer alone, now Claudia had almost nothing to do. She had thought half an hour ago when she was still arranging caprine transport that she would be glad of five minutes’ peace in which to curse all tall, dark and handsome lab assistants with PhDs and hero complexes, but now that she actually had that five minutes’ peace she was bored, jumpy and desperate for something to happen. It was a mark of how badly she had the jitters that she had started mentally ranking the hideous experiences of the past two hours, and a mark of how appalling the process of goat-finding had been that even Stephen Hart’s attempts to insist on lying in wait for the creature alone ranked beneath it.

 

She took out her Blackberry again, typed _‘Stephen Hart is a pain, tick yes or yes_ ’ and sent the text to Lorraine. She had hoped for a short wait, allowing her to speculate on something that wasn’t killer sabre-tooth tigers (because that was what this animal was, no matter how much Nick hedged his bets) but Lorraine’s efficiency defeated her. She received a reply within the minute.

 

 _I quite like him but I recognise that he could be difficult in the field._ Lorraine all over: tactful, grammatical and formal, and right now, very irritating.

 

 _he’s giving captain ryan conniptions,_ Claudia replied, deliberate in her provocative lack of capitalisation. _he wanted to sit up for the creature in a tree over a live goat alone._

 

 _I hope you dissuaded him_ , came the answer, and, ten seconds later: _Why a goat?_

 

 _you may well ask_ , Claudia typed, and stuffed her phone back into her pocket. Because she wasn’t sufficiently far gone to pace, she rocked back and forth some more, and then looked around for a fellow sufferer. She caught Captain Ryan’s eye and strode over to him. “Any news?” she demanded, concern and boredom making her brusquer than normal.

 

“None,” Captain Ryan said grimly, apparently not taking any offence. “Finn called in to say that the goat was making a hell of a racket but that there was no sign of the creature yet, and Hart told him to keep his voice down or there wouldn’t be any sign of the creature at all.”

 

“Helpful,” Claudia observed, a slightly biting tone to her words.

 

“I think we just have to wait,” Captain Ryan told her. He looked about as pleased as she felt. “At least the stubborn bugger agreed to take Finn.”

 

Claudia hummed her agreement, and then stamped her feet absently. It was getting cooler as the light leached from the sky, and thin tights and reassuringly official court shoes weren’t as appropriate for this endless waiting as they had been for talking to Julianne and Kayla Littlejohn.

 

“Finn doesn’t miss,” Captain Ryan said, apropos of nothing. “Neither does Hart. So.”

 

“All we have to do is wait,” Claudia agreed. “If one of them doesn’t shoot the creature the other will.”

 

Captain Ryan grunted, shifted his stance slightly, and stared around the perimeter, looking for miscreants to shout at. He didn’t find any, and went back to staring into the dark trees with a dissatisfied huff.

 

“I wish I could do what Abby is,” Claudia told him, in a sudden burst of sharing and caring envy precipitated by not having anything else to do or talk about.

 

Captain Ryan’s head whipped round, and he stared at Abby with undisguised confusion, then sent Claudia a dubious glance which Claudia duly interpreted.

 

“No, I _don’t_ mean reading a book whilst pretending to be oblivious to Adey hanging over her like a lovelorn sap,” she hissed, feeling that it was time to ditch some formality and say what she really thought. “I mean doing something relevant to my expertise in preparation for whatever comes out of that wood!”

 

“Oh,” Captain Ryan said, and cast a distinctly amused look at Adey. He shook his head reflectively and almost smiled.

 

Claudia thought some terrible, terrible things about workplace relationships, and by a miracle restrained herself from saying any of them. She folded her arms and looked away.

 

“So I think _Nimravus_ is really the best candidate...” Connor said loudly, gesticulating, and got a narrow-eyed look from Abby which he ignored when one of his flailing arms hit her textbook.

 

“On the basis of the tracks I can see what you mean, lad, but Stephen said they were inconclusive and when Stephen says things like that he generally means them. Now, _Adelphailurus_ , _that’s_ promising...”

 

“Oh God,” Claudia said under her breath, and settled in to wait.

 

***

 

“If you’re going to check in with Captain Ryan,” Stephen said in the kind of stifled whisper appropriate to waiting for killer sabre-toothed cats to turn up, “do it _quietly_.”

 

“I thought I did, sir,” Finn said.

 

Stephen made a mental note that next time he was going to pick someone who knew something about behaviour in the presence of large toothy animals, as opposed to someone who was an unnaturally good shot. “You thought wrong,” he said rather crossly, shifted his grip on his rifle and peered into the night.

 

He thought – he hoped – he’d got everything right. This was the site of a former kill; Stephen wasn’t certain, but he thought there was a reasonable chance the creature might return in the hope that something was left, even though almost the first thing they’d done on finding Adrian’s body was to remove it. The blood was still there, though, soaking into the soil, and there had been a _lot_ of blood. It was the right time for the creature to be hunting; although its habits were obviously disturbed, most big cats were nocturnal or crepuscular, and though they were pushing it a bit for twilight - it was almost pitch-black, the trees blocking out the faint dregs of light left - it would probably work. The goat tied to the base of a tree as bait was right: noisy and a good size for a potential kill. Stephen would have to buy Claudia a drink, or something. Very expensive chocolates, maybe.

 

Finn shifted slightly, obviously uncomfortable crouched on the planks and tree-branches. They creaked slightly, and Stephen crushed his irritation in favour of remembering the unfortunate accident Finn had fallen prey to.

 

“How’s the backside?” he murmured, casting a critical eye and running careful fingers over his rifle yet again. He was going to catch this bastard of a creature if it was the last thing he did, and he didn’t want any... technical hitches... to get in his way.

 

“Sore,” Finn admitted sheepishly, shifting again to ease the pressure on his bruised behind. The paintball had been fired at reasonably close range.

 

“Wasn’t your fault,” Stephen muttered, and then caught the faintest hint of a rustle and raised his hand sharply to silence Finn. He slipped the night-vision goggles Ryan had lent him over his head, and stared out into the suddenly green and luminous night. There was the tiniest flicker of a moving leaf in one of the bushes, and his finger tightened on the trigger guard.

 

_Wait for it..._

 

***

 

“Will something please _happen_ ,” Claudia said through gritted teeth, clenching her fists in her pockets. It had been a full hour since she had exchanged pleasantries with Lorraine via text, and she was itching for new information. Everyone at the perimeter was twitchy; Abby had given up on her textbook and was now worrying her lip, Cutter was pacing, and Connor was fiddling with the colour scheme on his database. Claudia wouldn’t have minded, except that he kept asking Abby’s opinion, and Abby kept looking like she wanted to thump him.

 

“Hart’s enforcing radio silence,” Ryan said grimly. “ _Something’s_ happening.”

 

Claudia didn’t even dignify that with a response.

 

***

 

Stephen almost couldn’t breathe; Finn, behind him, had gone perfectly silent and perfectly still. It was there, right there, in front of them.

 

Valerie Irwin had been right; it was in pitiful condition. Its fur was patchy, it had an obvious dud shoulder that was causing it to limp, and – though relatively small – its flesh hung off its bones as if it hadn’t eaten a substantial meal for a very long time. Killing humans for food certainly hadn’t brought it health. It was odd behaviourally speaking, as well; its stalking was terrible and the goat had already noticed it was there and was setting up an unbelievable racket. It was as if it had seen another member of its species stalk prey once or twice and had then been expected to repeat the performance with no instructions, like a child trying to learn to play cricket after watching just one match. Stephen couldn’t tell what it was exactly at this distance and through night-vision goggles, but he could see quite well that it was sick, young and inexperienced. It was also a ruthless killer.

 

Stephen centred the creature’s head in the sights, focussed on nothing more than getting this headshot. He breathed out and squeezed the trigger, and the creature leapt for the goat far too early and the shot went wild.

 

Stephen didn’t swear, there wasn’t time, but he drew in a sharp breath as the creature aborted its leap and sank to a crouch on the floor, snarling furiously, the unholy white glow of its eyes through the night-vision goggles fixed on them.

 

 _Now or never_ , Stephen thought, feeling Finn tense behind him and knowing that Finn was itching to get off a shot of his own. He knew what would happen next if he didn’t act _now_. The creature would go for them, Finn would start shooting, the machan wasn’t as high as he would have liked it to be -

 

Stephen took the shot and the creature’s chest blew apart even as it coiled its muscles to spring.

 

This shot, like the other, echoed through the park. A deafening silence fell in its wake.

 

Then the bloody goat started bleating again.

 

***

 

Claudia started at the first shot, followed a matter of moments later by a second, and scrabbled at the earpiece she’d requisitioned out of sheer boredom twenty minutes ago.

 

“Hart, report!” she snapped, at the same time as Captain Ryan demanded answers from Finn. “What’s happening?”

 

“It’s dead,” Stephen said, his voice made crackly by the radio but full of exhausted relief. “We killed it. It’s dead.”

 

Claudia let out a long breath that she hadn’t realised she was holding, and the weight of fear on her shoulders dropped away. “Nice job, Stephen.”

 

***

 

Stephen stared down at the corpse, laid out under the floodlights at the perimeter on a tarp before (as Stephen understood it) it was taken away to be burned. Captain Ryan stood beside him, a comfortingly solid presence, and Nick was across from him, alternately casting slightly concerned looks at him and enjoying a feverish argument with Connor as to what the thing actually was. Stephen’s shot had taken out most of its chest, and between that and the creature’s poor physical condition it was hard to ascertain its exact species, but Nick and Connor were enjoying themselves. So far, all they had managed to do was rule out _Smilodon_.

 

“I don’t like killing things,” he said out loud, apropos of nothing. Nick looked up from where he was crouching by the creature’s head, pointing out various physical features, but said nothing. It was Captain Ryan who answered him.

 

“Who does?” Ryan said, without any inflection of judgement in his voice at all.

 

Stephen grunted, shoved his hands into his pockets, and stared some more at the creature he’d shot. It was much what he had expected: the size of an adolescent, showing signs of malnourishment and too little flesh on originally well-fed bones. Its rough, shaggy fur, the colour somewhere between that of a lion’s and a puma’s and patterned with jagged charcoal leopard-like rosettes, showed signs of mange, and its teeth, though in passable condition with canines longer than most modern cats’, weren’t as long as the conventional image of sabre-toothed cats suggested. Its left shoulder and forepaw, which Stephen would put money on caused the creature to turn to easy human prey, were a mess: inflamed and puffy with a very faint whiff of gangrene. Stephen and Abby had already carried out a perfunctory examination, which had told them that just putting weight on the paw must have been absolute agony, and that the probable cause of all the trouble was the shotgun pellets Abby had felt under the skin, and had parted the fur to photograph. The original wound had healed messily, with a rough scar covered by fur, and was perhaps six months old; Stephen would have bet his life on its having been exacerbated by the past few days’ exertions, by the blows Sam Redford had dealt the creature, and by the stones thrown by parents trying to rescue Kayla Littlejohn. If the animal had been a little healthier, both Sam and Kayla would have been dead; probably the only reason they were not was that Renée Beaufort had managed to put up some resistance, and that the creature had been forced to flee from Renée Beaufort’s body at speed, either of which could have jarred the wound and (while having little effect, positive or negative, on the infection) further irritated the ligaments and muscles of the forepaw and shoulder.

 

“Cutter wants a post-mortem,” Claudia announced suddenly, appearing to his right.

 

“He does?” Stephen asked neutrally.

 

Claudia nodded. “Abby thinks not. She says it’s a bad specimen because it’s so malnourished, and that it’s clear how the creature started killing humans and died itself. I wanted to know what you thought.”

 

“Me?” Stephen said stupidly, staring down at her.

 

Claudia’s eyes narrowed slightly in a way that suggested that, while he might be the ‘hero of the hour’ (italics included), she had not forgotten either the goat or the incident with the displeased homeowner. “You.”

 

Stephen looked down at the creature at his feet. It seemed pitifully small, in a way, and so maimed and sick as to be harmless. Redford’s comment that it wasn’t large was much closer to the truth than Kayla’s assertion that it was huge. Still, it had killed at least three people and wounded two, one a child, and even if its wounds had forced the unorthodox choice of prey, that put it beyond the pale.

 

 “Abby’s right,” he said abruptly. “Let it burn.”

 

The odd look Claudia gave him told him that that had been a strange choice of phrasing, but Ryan moved slightly closer to him, radiating warmth and reassurance, and Stephen was able to return Claudia’s look calmly.

 

“All right,” Claudia agreed, and then cast an unfavourable glance at Cutter and Connor (still arguing). “And try to get them to reach a consensus before Lester gets here? Please?”

 

“ _Lester_ ’s coming?” Stephen almost squawked.

 

Claudia looked irritable. “Yes. I couldn’t stop him. I think he wants to assure himself that it’s dead.”

 

Stephen bit his tongue on a swearword.

 

“You’ve got half an hour,” Claudia said, checking her watch, and then marched off to make sure her arrangements were moving forward.

 

 

Sure enough, Lester arrived almost exactly thirty minutes later, sweeping up to the perimeter in his Mercedes and favouring the perimeter, the team, and the policemen with a judgemental eye as he climbed out. He was still wearing an immaculate suit and tie. Claudia moved forward to meet him, probably explaining the circumstances of the kill and the arrangements she’d made for the creature’s body to be taken away. Stephen, not keen to discuss the dead animal with Lester, hung back. Abby wandered up and stood beside him.

 

“What d’you think he wants now?” she asked, arms folded against the chill.

 

“I don’t know,” Stephen said, and pressed his lips together.

 

“Think we might be about to find out?”

 

Stephen nodded, and flexed his fingers inside his pockets. “Cutter and Connor decided on _Dinofelis_ , didn’t they?”

 

“Mm. Based on the anatomy of the legs.”

 

Stephen nodded again, and folded his arms to match Abby’s. It made him feel slightly better about the rapidly-approaching suited shark. “’S what I thought.”

 

“Hmm?”  
  
            “ _Dinofelis_ wasn’t a true cat and that thing there has some anatomical features that don’t square with its being a feline.” Stephen cleared his throat and added, under his breath, “Here comes trouble...”

 

“Congratulations, Dr Hart,” Lester said, giving no sign that he’d heard Stephen’s remark. “And is this the creature?”

 

            Stephen nodded. Lester sauntered past him, and stared down at the creature, wrinkling his nose.

 

            “Rotting already?” he said at last.

 

            “Its wound is septic,” Abby said.

 

            Lester pursed his lips and nodded his head from side to side as if accepting this as an explanation for the time being. “And ‘it’ is?...” He let his words trail off delicately.

 

            Cutter straightened from where he’d been crouching by the creature’s head. Connor looked at him as if this was an unexpected move, and stood up himself. “ _Dinofelis_ , we think. A false sabre-toothed cat – not really a feline at all.”

 

            “Really,” Lester said, sounding as if there was a politely-stifled yawn in his words. His voice hardened. “And how did it get here?”

 

            “I have a theory,” Stephen said, surprising everyone, including himself.

 

            Lester turned to him. “Please. Enlighten me.”

 

            Stephen caught Captain Ryan’s eye, then switched his attention to Lester. He cleared his throat and moved forward a few steps, looking down at the creature. “First, it’s an adolescent. It can’t be more than about two years old. Second, this animal didn’t grow up in a pride, or it didn’t finish growing up in a pride – or whatever social structure it should’ve grown up in. When it stalked the goat, it did it badly, very badly – it didn’t really know how to hunt. Third, we know this area is crawling with anomalies. Fourth, we know it has a local legend of a tiger. Fifth, we know that this creature was heading directly for this area, and more specifically the Forest of Dean, which is the most active bit of all.”

 

            “Yes? And?” Lester looked slightly irritable, but as if he recognised that this was going somewhere.

 

            Stephen ignored Lester, but looked up from the corpse and met Ryan’s eyes, saw his serious, listening face. He swallowed and continued. “I think this creature came out of an anomaly in the Forest of Dean, about a year ago. It managed to feed itself on – I don’t know, roe deer or something, people’s rubbish bins, foxes. But most of what you get in the Forest of Dean is wild boar. Not very friendly to something that must have been practically a cub. So it moved away.” He took a deep breath. “Then it got shot. Don’t know how, don’t know where. But, one, the wound made it hard for it to hunt, and two, it needed to seek sanctuary, it needed to go _home_. So it started moving back down towards the Forest of Dean, and on the way, it discovered that humans are easy meat.” He made a pointless gesture, palm up, sweeping the air above the creature as if to say ‘and here we are’. “And then it discovered that they aren’t.”

 

            Nobody spoke for a bit. He shifted from foot to foot, and added: “I could just be anthropomorphising. Probably am. But we’ll never know the truth anyway, so we may as well have a decent lie.”

 

            “It’s a _nice_ lie,” Abby said at his side. He looked down at her, and she grinned up at him. “It’s a _good_ lie. It makes sense of all the evidence. I like it.”

 

            He smiled crookedly back at her. “Thanks, Abby.”

 

            Lester looked down at the creature, and then caught Stephen’s eye. “I’ve certainly heard worse,” he conceded.

 

            Nick nodded, the slight twist of a smile to his lips telling Stephen that something had been done right and Nick was proud of him, and Connor beamed and gave him a thumbs-up. Stephen found Ryan’s face, and hoped that his eyes weren’t pleading for approval; Ryan smiled.

 

            “Me too,” Claudia said warmly. “Much worse.” She checked her phone. “The people from the incinerator are here, Captain Ryan.”

 

            Ryan nodded, and broke eye contact with Stephen. “Fiver, Jenkins, Adey,” he said, and the three men came forward, wrapped the body up in the anonymous black tarpaulin it was lying on, and tied the bundle shut with heavy nylon cord. With a grunt, the three of them lifted the black package and carried it away, towards the truck waiting only about a hundred metres away. Stephen watched it go as it was heaved into the back of the truck, which drove away, out of his life and everyone else’s.

 

            “Now,” Claudia said, tucking her phone away, brisk, businesslike and refreshingly normal. “I suggest we all go home.”


	12. Chapter 12

 

**EPILOGUE**

 

Lester sat back in his office chair and surveyed his domain. The suite of offices at the Home Office, though not as spacious as Lester would have liked, was a vast improvement on crushing themselves into the Mitchells’ hotel. _That_ was fine for emergencies, but not acceptable in the long term, even the bolshier members of the team admitted that – although there _was_ that problem where the Powers That Be expected Captain Ryan _and_ Captain Stringer to fit into one office that wouldn’t have housed Miss Maitland, let alone two burly soldiers.

 

Never mind. Lester reached forward and sent the email to the Minister about possible separate premises. He’d spent the past two days drafting it, on and off, in order to ensure that it was perfect, and he was quite pleased with it. Hopefully after the man-eating sabretooth rampaging across the south west of England the Minister would take the anomaly project and their budget more seriously.

 

Lester heard someone enter the outer office.

 

“Hi, Miss Wickes. Settling in well?” a cheerful voice said, and Lester discerned that Stephen Hart had come to pay a visit, although why Lester couldn’t fathom. Also, he sounded very... pleased with himself.

 

Lester entertained dark suspicions about Captain Ryan for a moment, before listening to Miss Wickes’ response.

 

“Not bad. It’s much easier to keep track of things here,” Miss Wickes admitted, and then asked the question Lester wanted to: “What are you doing here, Dr Hart? You could easily have emailed me these. In fact...”  


            “I will when I get back to CMU. Cutter and I were coming up to town anyway, so I thought...”

 

            Lester raised an eyebrow where neither Miss Wickes nor Stephen could see him.

 

            “Thank you all the same.” A rustling of papers. “I was about to send you a rude email on the subject. Has Professor Cutter wandered off, or is he busy elsewhere? I know he said something about a conference.”

 

            “That isn’t for months,” Stephen said easily, reminding Lester to have a word with Cutter about the Official Secrets Act and not breaking it. So as not to forget and suddenly find the scientific community buzzing over Cutter’s indiscretions, Lester made a note. “No. He muttered something and sloped off in the direction of the West End.”

 

            “Hmm.” Lester could hear laughter in Miss Wickes’ voice. “Obviously not connected to Claudia leaving early to go on a date...”

 

            Stephen laughed.

 

            “Are you going back down to CMU tonight?” Miss Wickes asked, mind for the practicalities as evident as ever. “If Professor Cutter and Claudia are finally sorting themselves out, I can’t imagine you’d want to be a third wheel.”

 

            “God, no!” Hart’s voice turned oddly shy. “I’m going out for a drink with the lads – Lyle and Ryan and Ditzy, you know? And Ryan said I could kip on his sofa.”

 

            “Sounds like fun,” Miss Wickes said politely, a note of amusement still in her voice. “Say hello from me, won’t you? And do send me the electronic copies of these when you get a chance. Thanks for bringing them in, anyway.”

 

            “You’re welcome. See you around, Miss Wickes.”

 

            “You too, Dr. Hart,” Miss Wickes said almost absently, and footsteps and the slamming of the door indicated that Stephen Hart had left the building.

 

            Lester decided that one task accomplished did not the end of the workday make, and sat forward in his chair again to review Captain Ryan’s latest request for larger things that went bang, just in case there was something he hadn’t been sufficiently rude about. After a few minutes, he heard the sound of packing up in the outer office, and Miss Wickes put her head around the door.

 

            “Sir James, I’m just leaving.” She took in the state of his office, and frowned. “Sir, are you planning to stay in long?”

 

            “Not particularly,” Lester drawled. “Why?”

 

            “It’s six o’clock on a Friday and I know you haven’t got anything outstanding,” Miss Wickes said, the words ‘except that wrangle with the Minister over new premises we’re both pretending I don’t know about’ going unsaid.

 

            “I’m tying up loose ends, Miss Wickes. Have a nice weekend.”  


            Miss Wickes appeared to battle with her conscience, before giving in and taking the path of least resistance. “You too, sir. Oh – Lieutenant Lyle passed by. Twenty minutes ago. You were out.”

 

            Lester tried very hard to conceal a quirk of interest, and resorted to sarcasm. “I wonder what he’s blown up this time? Did he leave a message?”

 

            “He said he’d drop by on Monday, anomalies allowing. I asked if it was urgent, but he said not.” Miss Wickes moved to go. “See you on Monday, sir.”

 

            “See you then, Miss Wickes.” Lester stared at his screen as Miss Wickes left, and wondered what Lieutenant Lyle had wanted. Nothing too important, obviously. The man wasn’t so frightened of Miss Wickes that he wouldn’t be prepared to hang around and clutter up her office for a while.

 

            Lester glanced out of the window, and saw that it was still sunny and bright despite the advanced hour. He looked back at his computer and felt a burst of revulsion for work. Miss Wickes was right: it was the weekend, nothing spectacular had happened yet, why shouldn’t he leave? He should take advantage of the peace and quiet afforded to him before Cutter broke the Natural History Museum, or a stegosaurus took up residence on the terrace of the Houses of Parliament, or Lieutenant Lyle blew up a National Heritage site. For God’s sake – it was the _weekend_.

 

            Lester logged off his computer, packed up his briefcase, and went home to startle his daughter by sweeping her off to that film she kept going on about and a meal out, partly because it would make up for his troublesome absence earlier – she hadn’t liked spending time with her mother at all - and partly because he felt like it. It was a bad day in anyone’s life when you couldn’t snatch a little joy, and Lester intended to take every last bit he could get.


End file.
